IN A

MILK AND HONEYED

LAND

SAMPLE

IN A

MILK AND HONEYED

LAND

SAMPLE

RICHARD ABBOTT

© Copyright 2012-2016 Richard Abbott

All rights reserved

This is a free sample of the full-length novelwhich may be purchased in electronic andpaperback format.No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form orby any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, or otherwise, without the written priorpermission of the author.

ISBN: 978-0993-1684-2-0 (softcover)ISBN: 978-0993-1684-3-7 (ebook format)(These ISBNs are for the complete book)

Matteh Publications

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For Roselyn, for family

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Contents

Maps ix

Prelude 1

Alph 5

Beth 27

Gaml 53

Dalth (part only) 75

Background notes 77

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Also by the Author

Historical FictionNovels:

Scenes from a LifeThe Flame Before Us

Short stories:The Lady of the LionsThe Man in the Cistern

Science FictionNovels:

Far from the Spaceports

Cover information

Cover artwork © Copyright Ian Graingerhttp://www.iangrainger.co.uk

Original Matteh Publications logo drawn by Jackie Morgan.

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MAPS

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The Region

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The Town of Kephrath

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Prelude

Richard Abbott

THERE WERE FOUR CHILDREN of the god that year. I re-member hearing that, many times over, through all my

growing years, though it was a long time before I understoodwhat it meant. That year was a unique year, a unique timeto be alive. There were more of us then than any other year,before or since. Perhaps such a year will never come again,not now the hill country is changing and the new houses areleaping up in little clearings everywhere. Indeed the wholeland is changing. Had I wanted, they would have built for meone of these houses in whatever village I chose, as a rewardfor all my efforts. Some would once have said that this wouldhave been the reward for betrayal rather than the wages oflabour.

But even these newcomers could see that my place was inthe great house beside the high place of Kephrath, among thefamilies of my birth. The place where I lived and laboured,loved and learned loss. So, whether through gratitude or pity,here I live still. I am at home among my people to be sure, butI am also a stranger in the eyes of these strangers. They eventie their kefs differently to us, bundled oddly around theirhead. I have not troubled to learn their style. I am strangehere to them, though I have lived here my whole life, and theland is becoming strange to me, though I know every hill andvalley in it. They still need us to uphold the new alliances,but the need sits uncomfortably with some of them.

I feel, however, some kinship with them. They have hadsomething of an uncertain, shifting childhood, and have cho-sen to be here, to live here in this place that is beautifulbut not overflowing with wealth. They have been brought upsinging one song, and then have tried to learn another. Theyhave found themselves willing to unite with people who theyhad not planned to meet, and who they came upon by chance.Though their customs are odd, their yearning is not. Theyfeel, like me and like my own people, the hunger that comeswith displacement, and the thirst that impels one to find ahome.

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Prelude

This story tells of we three who lived past infancy, and thethings that we did and said in those days. Although therewere four of us born, Mahur was a sickly boy who died beforethe year of his birth had turned. Then there were three, fora little while. Then there were only two. We were the linensashes that tied up all the leather-bundled tales of our villagelife.

I remember those bundles that were carried on the backsof the Mitsriy scribes. They still travel the roads down nearthe coast, still with their escort of bowmen, but they havenot come up this way now for many years. The traders whobrought little caravans of donkeys up and down the greatridgeway road, or across the rough hillside tracks, still cometo us, but less often now, and at erratic intervals instead ofevery season.

I have been seer to my people, and sung the songs of thegreat cycle around the stones of the high place. Now I telltales. I have watched over the threshold that divides the liv-ing and the dead, and although I am still doorkeeper in myown house, it is becoming a different house, a different life.

There were four children of the god that year. We werereckoned as once-orphaned, living each in the house of ourmothers, brought up as foster child by their husbands, withhalf-brothers and half-sisters according to the overflow of lifein that family. We did not understand what it was to be achild of the god for many years – the words that had meant somuch to empty wombs passed us by in the silent air.

The words meant nothing, but some of us grew familiarwith estrangement as we grew up, looks of darkness and re-jection from unwilling surrogate fathers, a sense of displace-ment amongst our peers, mixed pride and disdain. Othersfound happy acceptance. We still clung to each other. This isour story.

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Richard Abbott

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Alph

KIRARU YEAR 7 – ETANIM YEAR 10

I WAS IN DELIGHT all those days,playing in his presence all the time,

playing in the places where we live,delighting with the children of the land.

Richard Abbott

CHILDHOOD IN THE HILL COUNTRY was an ever-changinground. Damariel ran with the other children to the lit-

tle stream and splashed in it, all of them naked minnows to-gether in the noisy water. It was the end of a cloudless Kiraruday, and was very hot outside the dappled shade of the shorttrees, their leaves faded and slightly shrivelled as they waitedfor the autumn rains.

Several of the village women did aunt-duty from a vantagepoint off to one side, shaded out of the sun under a rocky out-crop. Long strands of creeper hung down from the top, reach-ing almost down to the head of the tallest woman. Like therest, she wore a married woman’s kef, with blue borders anddiagonal weave.

Damariel stopped knee-deep in the stream for a moment,watching her adjust the way her kef draped over her left shoul-der and then retie it. He was suddenly caught by how thetrailing greenery itself looked like the fringes of a kef, withthe blue embroidery of the women’s headscarves like flowersbudding at the ends of the tassels.

He turned to one of the other children nearby, excited andwanting to share this new insight into his world, but as heturned around a water fight started and the air was loud withshouts and laughter. He saw his two younger brothers in themiddle of it, jumping up and down together to make theirwaves bigger. His friend Kothar was off to one side, callingout loudly, getting everyone involved except himself. Nobodywas interested in vines that hung like a kef over a rock.

His brothers were both summer babies, born almost exactlya year apart, and very alike in looks and temperament. Theyhad dark hair, starting to wave like their father’s. Damarielhad something of his mother Yeresheth’s face, so he was told,but, of course, looked quite different from Baruk and Bashur.They looked like their father Shomal. He didn’t.

Their little sister Sosanneth was too young yet to ventureinto the stream, and she sat with open mouth on one of thewomen’s laps and pointed at the medley in front of her.

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Alph

She saw Damariel looking at her, waved her arms, andlaughed, but all at once the fighting caught up with him andhe was toppled into the water. He gasped and scrambled tothe edge, running up the bank to Sosanneth who held out herarms as he approached. He picked her up awkwardly anddabbled her feet in a quieter part of the stream, a little awayfrom the others.

The sun dipped behind a tree on the ridge above them andthe women got up, calling and corralling their charges intosome order, carrying the younger ones and leading the restback up to the village houses, where the sun would lingersome while longer. Qetirah’s mother Kinreth was carryingSosanneth on one hip and Qetirah’s younger sister Laylah onthe other. Qetirah and Damariel followed along behind. Theminnow children went back inside by twos and threes, driedoff and were made to wear at least some clothing.

Damariel hung back from following his brothers into theirhouse, and waited until Kinreth had set Sosanneth and Lay-lah down on the ground. Taking their hands, with Qetirahon the other side, he helped them across the door lintel, pass-ing under the branches and bright flowers of the mimosa treerooted beside the door post, draped amply above their heads.

They went into the house. Damariel’s mother was in thefinal stage of preparing bread, and a bean sauce simmered toone side. The two women talked for a while across the openkitchen space as Baruk and Bashur ran about, Sosanneth andLaylah giggled as they watched them, and the older two chil-dren began shaping the dough into flat circles on the griddle.

The village houses were all much of a pattern. The door ledinto a broad room running front to back. In here was a placeto cook, some storage jars for water or foodstuffs sunk intothe floor, stools and a table to eat at. On either side, left andright, were smaller rooms, mostly for sleeping places, or setaside for indoor work such as weaving, carpentry, or repairs.

Some houses had another room or two tacked on to thelong side, usually for some particular purpose; Qetirah’s fa-

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Richard Abbott

ther Caleb used his for metal-work. Many of the extra roomshad been added when a daughter married, so bringing an ex-tra man into the household. Ideally the house never reallystopped being extended in this way, though in practice fewhouses had added more than a couple of rooms for this pur-pose.

Outside there might be a wooden or stone lean-to, or asmall shelter for livestock. Most households used the flat roofarea as extra living space, at least in the summer months,with a wide diversity of walls or windbreaks approached bymeans of a ladder outside or steep stair inside. The largesthouse in the village belonged to the seer and his wife, butDamariel had never been inside it and had no idea how it wasarranged.

Damariel did not know it then, but that summer was thelast time he and all his year would play naked together inthe stream. When the springtime came again, the girls of hisage had been separated out and seemed to move around onlyin close-knit, slightly intimidating groups, wrapped carefullyin their plain white adolescent kefs. They had learned to tiethese in the upland style, covering all their hair, tied belowtheir chin, and lying loosely at shoulder-length over smock ordress. The boys spent most of the day working with the olderyouths and men. For them, a kef was more of a practical thing,convenient for keeping sweat out of the eyes.

Shomal was quite particular about his sons wearing theirkefs all through the waking hours, especially out of the house,but some of the other fathers were less strict. Walking aroundthe village and the adjoining strips of cultivation you mightsee all manner of variations of style and habit for the men’sheadwear. The women were altogether more consistent anddiscreet.

For the meantime, however, Damariel’s attention was fo-cused on making the bread into even shapes. The two womenfinished talking, and Qetirah, Laylah, and their mother leftfor their own house.

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Alph

Qetirah lived a little further down the ridge and off to thenorthern side. Her father worked with metal, mostly bronzebut some silver when he could get hold of it, and Qetirah of-ten wore a little brooch he had made once from a small pieceof scrap metal. She lived near to Kothar, Damariel’s clos-est friend. Kothar was bold and outspoken, and Damarielfelt rather in awe of him on some days and quite shocked onothers. However, he knew without a doubt that in difficulty,Kothar would be loyal and confident.

But just over the ridge from Qetirah’s house, and a littleto the west, stood two or three houses belonging to a familyYeresheth thought little of and spoke out against. Damarielwas discouraged from making friendships with the children ofthese households, though the reason for this was never veryclear to him.

Yeresheth’s house was also on the southern side of the vil-lage, a little way down the ridge from the high place. Hersister Nerith lived in the house across the narrow alleywaywith her husband and two children, a bright yellow rock-rosebush adorning her door. There was an uncle, too, but he hadmoved away to one of the larger towns along the distant coastbefore Damariel had been born, and he had never met him.

Damariel had been told that his mother’s mother used tolive in Yeresheth’s house, which of course had been her housein former years. But with Baruk and Bashur being born only ayear apart, and Sosanneth born less than two years later, shehad moved in with Nerith. He vaguely remembered her beingin the house long ago, but for most of his life she had been aremote, rather shrunken figure who he saw only occasionally.

Shomal, Yeresheth’s husband, had no living relatives, andthe house he had grown up in had been taken over by anotherfamily in exchange for a field with some olive trees at the ex-treme western end of the ridge, where it caught the settingsun and the fluttering wind blowing up from the coast.

The village relied on several different means of support.Most families had an area of cultivation – some, like Shomal,

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Richard Abbott

grew mainly olives or other fruit or nut bearing trees, whileothers mostly tended vegetables and other crops. Many mixedthe two in one measure or another. Alloni cultivated a widestretch of land that was perfect for grape-vines: it had be-longed to his mother long ago, but as she had had no daugh-ters it had passed to him and his wife to be tended.

Either side of the central ridge, following the contours downa little way amongst the short trees and scrub, were terracedstrips with grain and beans. Along with the crops, a fewhouseholds had decent-sized flocks of sheep or goats. Thesewere mostly pastured in groups during the day a little way off,north or south along the hillside, or else taken off all togetherfor a few weeks at a time. Small noisy groups of chickensstrutted around most of the houses.

The surrounding countryside was another source of food,and almost all the women knew where to find wild berriesand green herbs in season. A few of the men, like Kothar’s fa-ther Labayu, hunted or trapped game as it roamed, regularlybringing rabbit and hare in numbers down to the village, withoccasional deer for the festivals and other special occasions.

The lowlands off to the west were much more generous,with large herds scattered in the denser vegetation, but themain targets down in the valleys were the storehouses of thevillages there. Danil led a group of five or ten other men ininfrequent raids to secure easy bags of supplies. They wentarmed, and spoke as though they were warriors, but rarelysaw real danger. Stealth and speed of movement were thetactics of choice, and a real pitched fight with weapons couldmean disaster for both communities.

There were a few craftsmen and women in the community,like Issi the potter, Caleb the metal-worker, or Shelomith-Rahmay whose embroidery could be found in most of the vil-lage kefs. Most of these people’s work stayed within the vil-lage and was exchanged for other goods, but some of it wentup the hill to Giybon to be traded further afield, supervisedand organised by the chief.

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Alph

Sometimes of an evening Yeresheth would recall for themthe names of her ancestors, her mother and mother’s mother,the men they had married, back as far as she could remem-ber and the children retained interest. Damariel had stayedawake a few times when she had told the list of names back tothe time when the whole community had moved south, southout of the mountainous regions well to the north, where thewinters were so much colder than here and the living washarder. He was never quite certain of the sequence when hewoke up the next morning, and was convinced that she didnot always tell the names in the same order. The names gotstranger as they came from longer ago: names from the norththat only a few in the village used any more, and nobody inDamariel’s family. These were names like Daduya and Per-izzi, Putiheba and Erwina-Teshub, and the oldness of themrolled around his heart as he slipped into sleep.

At the top of the village, serving as the spiritual and socialheart of the community, was the high place, with its arc ofstanding stones nearly joining in a circle, leaving an open gaplooking out towards the north. Beside the stones stood the al-tar stone, and the house of the village seer and his wife Qerith.Iqnu had been seer and priest much longer than Damarielhad been alive, and Damariel only ever encountered him as aslightly vague, slightly fatherly figure at a distance. He heardhim speak only at the opening of the great summer and win-ter festivals in which young children were involved. Next yearhe would be allowed to stay longer at these, and take part inthe autumn and spring festivals as well. He was dimly awarethat Yeresheth and Shomal had quite different opinions aboutIqnu, and that Shomal usually changed the subject when theseer’s name was mentioned.

The meal was ready, and before long Shomal returned fromhis field, his tunic speckled with olive twigs and leaf-dust, abundle of tools gathered in one hand and a small bag of veg-etables in the other. The children alighted around the food.Sosanneth was nearly asleep already, and managed only a lit-

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Richard Abbott

tle bread and a few spoons of stew before being settled in thesleeping room.

Shomal talked at some length to Baruk and Bashur aboutthe day just past, more briefly to Yeresheth, and finally toDamariel. Shortly after, the three boys joined the sleepingSosanneth and spread out their own sleeping rolls from wherethey had been bundled against the side of the little room. AsDamariel fell asleep, his inner sight still full of a rock wearinga kef, he heard the adults’ voices quiet in the next room.

Outside, the village of Kephrath clustered along the back-bone of the ridge. There were about a hundred houses strad-dled across the crest as it ran down from the high place andits stones towards the setting sun, spilling a little down eitherside into the valleys below. Households of clan-related fami-lies tended to cluster together to form islands in the commu-nity. Yeresheth would tell them that originally, generationsbefore, the division into clans had been cleaner, stricter, butas the years had gone by the lines had blurred. Intermar-riage was quite common, as was exchange of property as fam-ily wealth ebbed and flowed. The clan islands were no longerso distinct, but extended encroaching swirls into one anotherlike cream being stirred into porridge.

Perhaps twenty houses now stood empty and unused. Theolder inhabitants spoke of how this family and that had movedtowards the coast, or how this family and that had mergedwith another and left their home vacant. Nobody remem-bered a day when all the houses had been full, but the storiesthat had been passed down spoke of such a time, when eventhe several ruined, roofless houses up the ridge from the highplace had echoed with occupancy, along the track towards Giy-bon. But in some of these houses, even the door plants of thewomen had died back and withered.

Straddling the track up towards Giybon was the town gate.The gate stood on its own, not connected to a wall or any otherbuilding. It was ceremonial rather than practical; trade wasconducted here, or formal decisions on behalf of the commu-

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Alph

nity, and it served more to represent the boundary betweenthe village and the outside world than to divide or protect.The Mitsriy, who had governed the region for many years now,would not let walls be built in defence in most towns, and onlythose few who retained their older defences, with steep slopesand large stone blocks, were allowed to keep them. This gatewas not a defence, but a gathering place.

Two summers later they mourned Yeresheth’s mother andplaced her in the family tomb. Damariel remembered the dayas a very solemn one, with his mother and aunt supportingeach other up by the stones as her body went into a darkcave. A group of men had rolled a great stone back acrossthe entrance, and Iqnu had carried out some kind of ritual.A spatter of unseasonable rain had pattered across the groupof villagers stood around, and that, together with the scud-ding wind, had prevented him hearing most of what was said.Afterwards, life continued in much the same way as it hadbefore.

But the following year he had cause to think again aboutthe number of people living in Kephrath. On this particularday he first saw the man who was the chief of the four towns,Yad-Nesherim. Yad-Nesherim lived up at Giybon, which there-fore, just for now, was the head of the four towns. It hadnot always been this way: Yad-Nesherim’s father, while still ayoung man, had wrested the chiefdom away from a family inJarrar’s town, Woodlands.

That had been achieved without too much conflict, sincethe previous chief, Kabkabim, had become greedy and inept.Even the people of his own town had wanted him gone in theend, as his steady accumulation of wealth, his increasinglyobstinate demands, and his refusal to be lavish with gifts andfavours had settled opinion forcefully against him. He hadbeen the fourth son of his line to hold the chiefdom, and the

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Richard Abbott

older stories never spoke well of such long lineages holdingpower. Two or three generations worked, but often after thatthe seed grew weak and the growth was twisted.

Once, many generations ago, two chiefs had come out ofKephrath, and a woman who had written on behalf of thewhole community to the Mitsriy governor, but not since. Acouple of families, such as that of Shelomith-Rahmay, still as-serted a lingering status through descent from a former chief.The family still held good standing in the community, but thelink was reckoned by most to have grown tenuous.

Other families now held – or at least claimed – more swayand influence, such as Issi the potter and his wife Asherith,whose children Saphiret and Yusuf seemed intent on gain-ing status. But the rivalry for the privilege of chiefdom wasbetween Giybon and Jarrar’s town. They were larger thanKephrath or the fourth town, Meyim, and power seemed tofollow size these days. Meyim was smallest, and had neveryet produced a chief. Damariel had heard it said that Giybon,with the largest and most important high place of the fourtowns, was most deserving of having the chiefdom as well,but he had also heard others argue against this in the cool ofthe evening when wine was being shared.

From time to time Shomal spoke about the chief and hisfamily with a mixture of envy and derision. The envy wasfocused on the undeniable fact of their wealth and influence,and the derision on their apparent complete ignorance of whatwent on in Kephrath. It was said that Yad-Nesherim visitedWoodlands every month, Kephrath twice a year, and Meyimonly once. Damariel wasn’t sure about this, as he couldn’t re-member the chief appearing more than once a year, usually atone of the festivals when food, wine, and pleasure flowed veryfreely. But if Yad-Nesherim only put in a personal appearanceonce a year, his influence was much more overt.

Every half year some of his men arrived in the village witha row of donkeys, to collect pannier loads of grain, wine anddried fruit to take back to Giybon. Twice a year half a dozen

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Alph

of the village men had to go and work on the chief ’s land, hisbuildings, or the trackways leading north and south for a fewweeks. Trade was largely conducted through his hands andhis network of contacts, and townspeople were discouragedfrom trying to negotiate their own deals. Instead, those whohad craft or skill were supposed to take their goods up thetrack to Giybon for him to manage; frequently some covertdealing took place outside of this official policy.

Yad-Nesherim also maintained favour with the Mitsriy, per-sonally providing them with the tribute owed. Small groupsof Mitsriy soldiers might pass along the track, but did not stopin Kephrath to harass or threaten.

Yad-Nesherim was also diligent in cultivating good rela-tions with the communities. Most families had at one timeor another received some little gift or favour to acknowledgeservice or loyalty. Once when Shomal had been called to workduty in a particularly hot summer, he came home again witha sack of grain and a leg of venison across the donkey’s back.Kothar’s family kept on their wall a small Mitsriy amuletgiven to them by Yad-Nesherim’s father one winter. Most ofDamariel’s friends could tell similar stories.

To Damariel’s eyes, it all worked like a larger version of vil-lage life; very little silver changed hands, but gifts of one thingor another passed around from house to house, and from townto town. So long as the chief maintained a flow of generosityout to the four towns, as well as collecting goods in from them,people remained reasonably happy. Other than raids downinto the lowlands, there was no threat serious enough to needwarrior-like skill.

The real stability was in the hands of the seers, a man andwife at each of the four towns, binding the parts together intoa whole. The chief had no say in who was to be the next seer,but the seers provided the means to validate and support thechief. At the transition of power, it was they who anointedthe new leader. In principle they could challenge as well assupport, though this was rarely put to the test.

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Richard Abbott

They met as a group when and where they pleased, andhad their own plans and purposes. In name, and in speakingtheir mind on a matter, they were held equal, but the highplace up at Giybon was the largest. It also was the locationof the great flat stone that, from time to time, people slept onto seek a prophetic dream. The clarity of these dreams, andthe foresight they gave, was renowned. Occasionally peoplewould travel from far away, well outside the four towns, tosee if the other world truly was closer here than in their ownhome.

To find their own apprentices, and to train up the next gen-eration were parts of the seer’s job. Only small parts, though,and their main task was to hold together the links connect-ing this world to the next. They stood among and betweenthe living and the dead, among and between humankind andthe gods, and were apparently only tangentially interestedin matters of the chiefdom. Damariel had never met any ofthe other seers or spoken with them, but had seen them fromtime to time when one or other came down to Iqnu, some-times alone, sometimes in groups, men and women with asure sense of their own purpose.

On this particular day then, Yad-Nesherim arrived in Keph-rath with his son, Mahur-Baal, a youth enough older thanDamariel to carry weapons with the fighting men, and Ben-bamah, the man who led the raiding parties from Giybon.They brought with them two other men from Giybon who par-ticipated in the raids, a Mitsriy scribe leading a loaded don-key, and a squad of half a dozen Mitsriy soldiers, all excepttheir officer armed with bow and short sword. The officer car-ried a staff of office instead of a bow, but one of the other squadmembers served as his weapon-carrier.

Iqnu met Yad-Nesherim and the others at the standingstones and greeted them courteously, especially the scribe,who although bald seemed to Damariel to be quite young.The group were shown around the town, looked into houses,counted fruit trees and flocks, metal tools, jars of oil and wine.

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Alph

Qetirah told him later that in her mother’s house, they hadtallied all the finished and part-finished pieces of metal workCaleb was working on, and weighed all the spare amounts ofbronze and silver scrap in the house that were not alreadyaccounted. Her father had spent considerable time movingthings back into their right place out of the neat scribal pileswhere they had been counted.

By late morning they were done. Iqnu took Yad-Nesherim,Mahur-Baal and the Mitsriy officer into his house. The othersoldiers, Mitsriy and Kinahny, went down to Danil’s houseand sat outside, sharing jugs of wine and weapon tales. Danilknew Ben-bamah and the others well, though each villageconducted its own raids and rarely collaborated on them. Thescribe sat on one of the stones at the edge of the high place,in the shade of one of the other stones, and busied himselfworking on a large leather roll stretched over a wooden frame.Damariel went closer to see; he was writing careful charactersinto ruled columns, copying across from rough marks on somespare sherds of pottery.

The scribe looked up suddenly and saw Damariel watch-ing him. He wiped his forehead and said something thatDamariel did not understand. Seeing the boy’s blank look heswitched to a thick but comprehensible version of Kinahnythat Damariel was later to think of as a southern accent.

“Hello, boy. What do you want? Well, look, see the othermen, the soldiers are down there if you want.”

He pointed down the hill to where a burst of male laughtersounded from outside Danil’s house.

“Yes, they are, great lord, but I wanted to see what youwere doing.”

“I’m doing hot work. If you bring me a thing to drink, well,I can show you these things, see.”

Damariel ran off, begged a small jug of watered-down winefrom his mother on the grounds that the seer’s guest neededit, picked up a handful of raisins while her back was turned,and ran back up the hill. The scribe finished another column

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Richard Abbott

of marks and ran his finger slowly down a column of marksas though checking something. That done, he grunted withsatisfaction at the provisions, and moved slightly to one sideso Damariel could sit beside him. He looked up and downthe marks that the scribe had made on the leather roll andpointed to the most recent column of signs.

“What are these, great lord?”The man smiled a little at the title and moved his hand

across the columns.“Look, this says how many houses in your little village, and

this how many men, how many women, this, how many olives,and so on.”

Damariel pointed at one of the signs.“But this is not a man, sir. It is a hoop like the little ones

we use to keep the trailing vegetables off the ground.”“A hoop means ten. A coil like this, with a tail off to one

side, means one hundred, so ten lots of ten. At the top here,this is a man, you can see that easily, there he is sitting withone hand raised. And this is a woman, here in her long dress.This one means tree, see, it is like a branch. This roll here”,and he pulled a second strip of leather from his bag, unrolledit, and held it up for Damariel to see, “this is the counts foryour neighbour village Merom.”

“Meyim”, said Damariel without thinking, and suddenlyjumped up with his hand over his mouth. “Great lord, I didnot mean that you had spoken wrong.”

The man laughed. “If I have written it wrong, well, it mustbe changed. So let me change it now. Look how easy it is.”

He took out a sharp knife, scratched out the first two of thefour signs and carefully wrote two more in place. When he fin-ished he pointed to the signs, one after another, and repeated“Meyim.” Damariel had sat down again to watch, and shookhis head.

“Great lord, why must you count so many things?”“Well, so that your chief can pay the right taxes to the great

king who is the sun of all the earth. He should pay neither too

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Alph

little nor too much. Look, these columns are the tally fromlast time, ten years ago, when I suppose you were very small.Perhaps you were not even a baby, growing as an egg insideyour mother. Who can say? Your chief has said to the officialwho governs from Gedjet that he should pay less now, and Ihave come to see if he is right or he is wrong.”

“Which is it?”The scribe gestured up and down the columns of figures.“Well, there are fewer people but more trees, fewer flocks

but more metal work. Fewer houses that are lived in. I thinkyour chief may be right, but before I know for sure I must getthe full total.”

“It doesn’t seem so difficult that it needs a great lord likeyou?”

“How do you mean, boy?”“Sir, those men, the soldiers, they will do what you say.

Just now they drink and laugh with Hannah Taliy’s father,who leads our own raids, but if you commanded, they wouldcome up here and do whatever you said.”

“Yes, that’s quite right, boy. You have it just right. Theythink that because they have weapons and know how to usethem, well, that makes them more important. But you arequite right. It is not like that. Look at this.”

He took another drink from the jug, bent to pull somethingelse out of his bag, and as he straightened, moved a little tostay in the shade of the tall stone beside him. It was a roll ofa much thinner, more delicate stuff that crackled slightly ashe unrolled it.

Damariel had never seen anything like it. It was coveredwith little characters, mostly black but with a few here andthere picked out in red. He kept hold of it and moved it awayas Damariel reached out to touch it, but lifted it up so he couldsee it clearly. There was a pause, then Damariel shook hishead.

“Lord, I cannot understand it. But the marks are not thesame as the leather ones.” He pointed. “This one here is like

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that one there, but this one, and this, they are quite different.What is it, great lord? Why are they different?”

“Well, this leather one is for the records of the great king,may he live in prosperity and health. He is the sun at whosefeet people from every land bow down seven times and seventimes again. As of course do you, boy.”

He glanced at Damariel, who nodded seriously.“Even your chief who you call victorious in battle and glo-

rious over his enemies must do this.”He laughed a little, not unkindly.“So it must be written as befits a record of the king. But

this one is the way a scribe writes to another scribe, or to othermen or women who can read. A friend gave me this just beforeI left the Beloved Land. It is a copy of a piece he himself wasgiven by a friend who owed him a favour. What it is, is advicewritten to a young man choosing his life’s work. Look here,here it says do not be a farmer, because the work is hard andnothing grows properly, and here, do not be a soldier, becausethe life is dangerous and miserable, and everyone orders youabout. But here. . . ” and Damariel’s eyes followed the pointingfinger as it skimmed over the lines of markings.

“Here it says to be a scribe, because a scribe is a fine pro-fession in which you walk freely, and you account for the of-ferings to the gods, and inspect fine monuments, and live inbeautiful houses with the best of all women to be your wife,and have all manner of men and women servants to serveyour every need. And in your eternal house, your name willbe remembered because of the writing, even if, and may allthe gods forbid, your family should neglect you or forget tocarry out the offerings for you. Your name will live on foreverin the writing you have made.”

There was a pause. Damariel looked to and fro along therows of signs and pictures, seeing little stylised gods and men,birds and animals, things of nature and things made by thehand of man. The scribe finished all but two of the raisins andgave the last ones to Damariel.

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Alph

“Do you write, boy? I have also learned the Kinahny signsyou are now using among yourselves. What is your name?”

Damariel shook his head.“Damariel, sir. Not really. But our seer who lives just there

in the house with the oldest vine, the lord Iqnu, he showedme how to write my own name, and the names of my brothersand sister, and for a while I wrote ‘this belongs to Damariel’,or to Baruk, and the others, all over things in the house untilmy mother’s husband got cross about it and made me stop. Sonow I just mark on trees and stones when I am away from thehouse.”

The scribe laughed and pulled out a flat lidded box withsand in it. He bent down and found a sharp twig.

“Here, show me. I shall be pleased to see your name justhere.”

Damariel took the twig from him, bent over the tray in con-centration, and scratched out his name slowly.

“Very good, boy. Now, in my writing it would look like this.”Just below Damariel’s marks he scratched, very neatly but

quickly, four signs from right to left. Damariel looked at them,very solemnly.

“Is that how I would be written in your land, then, greatlord?”

“Yes, except that we would give you a proper Mitsriy name.You would not be called Damariel, but we would call you, oh,Nehem-Meri-Amun, I think. Then we would write it like this.”

He made another series of marks, longer, with a seated god-figure at the start.

“My name would grow longer in your country, then?”The scribe looked directly at him quite suddenly, an odd

expression on his face.“Well, I think it could, yes. Would you like it to?”The door to Iqnu’s house opened, and Iqnu himself brought

the group out into the sunshine, through the dappled shadeof the leaves of the old vine that clung to the house walls andcrowned the entrance. Qerith stayed back in the shadows of

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the door. Yad-Nesherim led Mahur-Baal and the Mitsriy offi-cer towards where the other men were resting.

Iqnu walked over towards the scribe, looking curiously atDamariel sitting beside him. Damariel stood as the seer ap-proached and looked at the ground, but the Mitsriy remainedseated, gathering his belongings together, collecting writinginstruments, leather, and pottery pieces into his bag.

“Sir, I hope the boy has not troubled you.”“Not at all, seer. It has been pleasant talking with him

and hearing what you have taught him until now. You shouldteach him more.”

“Of course, sir, if you say so.”“I do.”“Well, Damariel, thank you for entertaining our guest so

well. Now, run along to your home. We are all done here.”Damariel turned obediently to go, but the scribe caught

his arm, saying, “Wait a moment.” He bent over somethingin his lap, then stood up and handed a small pottery sherd toDamariel. On it he had marked in black ink the two sets ofsigns for Damariel’s name, one longer than the other. “Here,keep this, boy. May your name grow ever longer, Damariel.”

Damariel looked down at the piece of clay in his hand andnodded silently, his heart full of a passion he could not voice.He clutched the piece of writing tightly and held it againsthis heart. Then without looking back he ran off down the hill.He passed the group of Mitsriy and Kinahny soldiers, passedIssi the potter’s house within earshot of the Mitsriy officercalling one of his men away from talking to Saphiret, Yusuf ’solder sister, burst back into his house hearing his mother andSosanneth in the side room, and hid the pottery sherd thatheld his name in amongst his most precious personal things,where his brothers would not find it, where he could keep itsafe.

He came out of the house again. The visitors had gone.Shomal and his sons were coming back from Danil’s house.Shomal had a wine-flushed look and seemed very pleased with

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himself. Baruk and Bashur were chattering with excitement,and ran on to join Damariel when they saw him.

“Damariel, where have you been? You should have beenwith us. We’ve been in Danil’s house, we were allowed to staywith the men and hear the Mitsriy soldiers talk and one ofthem passed round his bow and I held it and Danil says we canbe in the raiding parties as soon as we’re old enough. Wher-ever were you, you should have been with us and seen all ofit.”

Shomal had gone past them inside the house. Yereshethappeared a few moments later, looking flustered, holding Sos-anneth tightly so she could not get away. She looked at thethree boys. “You three, go and tidy up in the olive field.”

“Mother, why? Can’t we stay here? What is there to do?”“I don’t know. The wall needs fixing. It always needs fix-

ing, you know that. Scare the birds away. Go on now. Startclearing the area at the far end where you might plant somevegetables. Go on now Baruk, Bashur, it’s what your fatherwants. Damariel, just go with them, now, go along.” Nerithhad come to her door at the sound of the voices. Yereshethput Sosanneth’s hand in hers. “Nerith, look after Sannah,will you. Shomal says he wants to talk.”

She glanced briefly at the children, at Sosanneth lookingcross but holding her aunt’s hand now, and the three boysnow running down the hill towards the olives. The two womenlooked at each other for a long moment. Nerith put her headon one side and pursed her lips. Yeresheth shrugged and thenwent back into the house, closing the door behind her.

Shomal was in a good mood at the meal that evening, lean-ing against the wall and watching Yeresheth as she movedaround the room, his eyes clinging to her. He was full of words.

“We certainly pulled the kef over the eyes of those pryingMitsriy today. I bet they only saw half what we’ve got. Theynever even knew about my olives. Old Nawar now, he madesure they never saw it, led them all up and down this placeand got them right confused. Yeresheth, sweetie, we must

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give him a jar of good oil this season, one of the bigger ones.And chief Yad-Nesherim will be really pleased with us, hewon’t have to pay nearly so much tribute these next few yearsand it will all be thanks to us here in Kephrath. Those blab-bermouths up at Jarrar’s town didn’t hide anything, so all thecredit’s ours. Baruk, Bashur, well done for being at Danil’shouse with the soldiers. That’s how to get yourself noticed, beright in the middle of it. You learn what you can from them,even if they are Mitsriy.”

He paused. “Even you, Damariel, they tell me you spenttime up with that scribe of theirs so he never moved from thehigh place. Good plan that, well thought of, you make sureIqnu knows it was you.”

Damariel nodded but said nothing, remembering the after-noon differently. Bashur nudged Baruk and whispered, “Askhim”. Baruk cleared his throat, looked around at the othersand sat up very straight.

“Father, sir, Danil said we could go out with the raidersbefore too long. Is that so?”

Yeresheth looked up from the pot she was stirring and be-gan to speak, but Shomal was quicker and louder.

“Of course, son, you and Bashur too, both of you. But onlywhen you’ve both learned some skills. Not for a few years yet.But keep putting yourself in front of Danil, he’s the one youhave to persuade in the end, what with him leading the raidsand all. Make sure he knows who you are and what you want,so there’s no doubt in his mind. Today was good for you.”

“Father, was our work in the field good too?”Shomal looked momentarily puzzled, and then laughed. He

was leaning back against the wall and looking very expansive.“Oh, yes, the field. Yes Baruk, I’m certainly very pleased

you went down there to work this afternoon. Tell me whatyou did.”

The three boys took turns to describe what they had done,but Shomal was not really listening. He rubbed his handstogether and tried to catch Yeresheth’s eye, but her head was

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bent over the cooking area and the fringe of her kef defeatedhim. In the pause at the end Sosanneth spoke.

“Why did I have to go and be with Aunty Nerith? I washelping mummy do mending of shirts and dresses.”

Again Shomal overrode Yeresheth’s attempt to speak.“Now, my pretty daughter, it’s good for you to be spending

time with the other women. Your Aunty Nerith has lots ofthings she can show you.”

“But I like being with mummy.”“Ah, so do I, Sannah. But you’re of an age to be with other

girls, other women. You can’t have her all to yourself, youknow.”

Yeresheth clattered the loud clay pots together, and beganto gather the empty bowls into a pile. Her movements werevery tight, very precise, and she was concentrating fiercelyon the task in front of her. Shomal leaned back again andwatched her indolently. Eventually she let her eyes meet herhusband’s. There was a cold hostility in them. He shruggedand chuckled. “What?”

“So can I help you now, mummy?”“No, Sannah. Go up to the roof and make up your beds. All

four of you, go on now.”The children climbed up and began arranging bedding in

the warm evening air. Like most of the other houses, a smallpart of their upper floor had its own roof, but most was opento the elements for warm-weather use with only a light clothstretched across wooden poles over their heads. Even thoughthe nights had turned a little longer than the days, they werestill up in the open part. A few weeks more, and they wouldbe back inside, all four children sharing one of the rooms. Oneor two houses had an actual room on the upper floor, but thiswas rare.

The night breezes and scents reached them up on the roof,and the freshness was pleasant. The sun was low on thehorizon away in the west. Sosanneth was already yawning,but Baruk and Bashur began talking again about the time in

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Danil’s house. Downstairs, Yeresheth’s voice had suddenly be-come angry. They paused to listen, but could make out noth-ing except the word “boasting”. Shomal didn’t seem to be re-plying, but once or twice they heard him laughing.

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Beth

ETANIM YEAR 12 – MEPAGH YEAR 13

O DRY-BONED LADY let me pour your last libation,oil and wine to cleanse this buried room,

light little lamps beside your gilded bracelets,shake once more your timbrel’s lonely bells.

Richard Abbott

TWO YEARS LATER, it was late evening in another Etanimday, and the days were unseasonably hot. The family had

eaten, and the full moon had risen a short way above the east-ern trees. The house was hot and airless, and Damariel, see-ing his father’s heated mood, began to consider how best tomake himself scarce. His younger brothers were loud in thecorner, and Sosanneth was sulking having been told that heryears of being a child at the stream were now over. His motherspoke.

“Nobody has gone to pour water at the tomb of my familythis month.”

She looked around the room. Baruk and Bashur glancedat each other, then at their father. There was a little silence,filled by Damariel.

“I’ll go, mother.”Shomal frowned.“Someone must pad down the roof. Someone must carry up

the bedding and the screens. Someone must help me with thetools. Someone must gather the hens.”

“I can do them, father, all of them.”Baruk had spoken from his place in the corner, and Bashur

nodded and stood up beside him.“I can help him, father.”Shomal nodded and waved his hand at Damariel in dis-

missal.“You go and see to the dead, then. My sons will help me

here. Take whatever your mother has prepared for the offer-ing.”

A little later Damariel walked out into the night air andturned up the ridge towards the high place and the seer’shouse. He passed between two of the stones and left severalflat bread rounds and some onions on the doorstep. There wasan oil lamp flickering in one of the windows, and he stoppedfor a moment to look at it. The house was large, with an ex-tensive enclosed and roofed area on the upper floor as well asan open hot weather area.

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Beth

Behind the vine with its dangling bunches of grapes abovethe door frame, the central area rose up into a little lath towerstanding higher than the rest. Attached to this, a carvedwooden panel faced him. The reliefs shone silver in the moon-light, and Damariel looked up at them, trying to puzzle outwhich parts of the carving were pictures and which were writ-ing.

As he stood there, the seer’s wife Qerith suddenly appearedfrom behind the upper room and the carving, carrying a bedroll and a bundle of sheets. He smiled and thought of hisbrothers doing the same at his own house, well able to imag-ine Baruk taking the lead over his brother.

Qerith bent to pick up some stray wind-blown leaves fromthe flat roof and tossed them over the edge. As they fluttereddown she saw Damariel and lifted her hand in greeting. Shewas not wearing a kef, and her unbound hair spilled over hershoulders. Embarrassed, he lowered his eyes and carried onacross the crown of the hill. He heard her call after him, once,twice, but the night air swallowed her words and he carriedon.

He went down the next part of the ridge and then up a lit-tle to the caves, the part of the town where the dead lived. Hewas well aware that they also lived around his house. He hadhelped his mother three summers ago to dig a little hole in thehard-packed kitchen clay, and put some of her mother’s hairthere. As woman of the house, his mother was responsiblealso for the monthly prayers for the dead, and until Sosan-neth was of an age to take the responsibility on, Damarielwas called to help. This was where the dead all rested; this iswhere they were gathered. This was their domain.

He thought back to the day that his mother’s mother hadbeen set to rest here, the whole village gathered to lament andhonour her, even the households that as a rule kept them-selves apart from the family. He could remember very littleexcept for a shower of sudden rain. He wondered briefly howmany generations lay here, what they spoke of in the whisper-

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ing dark, whether they were pleased with him and his family,whether they were able to commune with their remote ances-tors buried so far to the north. How much did they see of whattheir descendants were doing, and how far were they reallystill interested?

He scrambled up beside the great rock that closed off theentrance, past the crag that jutted out like a tower, to the littlefissure behind it that led back down into the body of the tomb.The fissure itself was small, too small for his hand, but the toppart had been flattened by former generations into a shallowbowl, chiselled out and then smoothed to receive offerings.

He retied his plain white kef into the solemn pattern, cov-ering his mouth and nose as well as his hair leaving only hiseyes exposed. He sat cross-legged beside the little bowl. Hepoured some water and a little mixed oil and wine into thecrevice, then scattered some crushed spice and barley seedinto it, and finished with another splash of water. The liquidstain was dark on the stone bowl, and he thought how themixture was trickling through the rocky channel and drip-ping into the echoing vault below. The liquid and its seedwas working its way through the little channels, he felt sure,and he wondered what fruit it would bear in the earth’s silentbelly.

He sat back and recited as many of the names of his an-cestors as he could remember, starting with his grandmotherand working back. He recalled his mother’s brother who hadfallen in the mountains, then Kunor’s wife Kalit, and the childWalud who had died with her during the birth, through toothers who were only names to him, empty of living details.Then he turned to the north and called on the kings of thedead to protect them all, and finally sat watching the moonfor a while, huge over the highland hills.

He loosened his kef back into its normal pattern. A breezehad sprung up from the west, cool on his side, and he sat fora while enjoying it, leaning against the rock pillar at his side,in no hurry to make his way back home. Eventually he rose,

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Beth

clambered back down to the ground, brushed the worst of thedust from his smock, and set off.

He did not want to go near the seer’s house again, norto venture too close at this hour to the households that hismother disliked, so he headed a little south, to his left, skirt-ing the hill’s crown, away from any of the houses. At firsthe was among low scrub, fragrant with juniper and rosemary.Little night animal noises rustled around him, and cicadassang in the brush to either side, falling silent as he came nearand resuming once he had passed.

He crossed over a small dry wadi, heavy with herbed scents,and paused on the other side to gather his bearings. Lost inhis thoughts, he had wandered a little too far to the south,and he angled slightly right to pass by the house of Ethanthe shepherd, who was away with the flocks up in the higherridges for another few weeks.

He stopped abruptly. Ethan’s door had opened and voicescame from inside. A woman laughed softly and then spoke.He could not hear the words, but heard her voice lift up inquestion. It was Isheth, Ethan’s wife. Damariel moved a littleto one side, into the shadow of a cypress, as a man came outof the door and paused by the trunk of Isheth’s snowbell tree.The two embraced and kissed, until the man turned, theirlingering hands keeping contact as he stepped away.

He came towards Damariel, wrapping a particularly largekef over his head and shoulders. Damariel realised with sud-den insight that it was Iqnu the seer who was approaching.He caught his breath, and some dry twigs under his feet crack-led and snapped. The village priest gave a great start.

“Who is that? Come out of the shadows, you, come here.Who is there?”

Damariel, heart pounding and speechless, took a few stepsaway from the tree into the moonlight. He pushed his kef backfrom his forehead so the older man could see him clearly.

“Damariel! It’s you! Well, lad, it is too long since we talked.How long have you been there? How long, I wonder?”

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Damariel shook his head and stammered in reply, “Notlong, great sir. Not very long to be sure. I just came downfrom the chamber of my mother’s ancestors, up there by thecrag. Mother sent me there to pay our respects and give ourgifts.”

He waved behind him. The other man nodded and looked athim for a long moment, hands on hips. “How long, then? Youknow that I must be out at night for the sake of the village.Did you see where I came from?”

Damariel looked up at him, and then across at the shep-herd’s house. The door was shut again, and there was nolight at the window. He thought about Ethan and his wifeIsheth, thought briefly about the things that his mother hadsaid about that household, and then said, quite slowly, “Hon-oured sir, I am not very sure what I did see now. The night isdark. Perhaps you would help me remember what happened?”

The seer laughed a little and then put his hand on Damar-iel’s shoulder.

“Come up and sit with me on the ridge, lad. Sit with me fora while. I think a lot about you, all of you, of course, Qetirahand Kothar too, and little Mahur who passed beyond. AndGalmet, and little Yad-Shalim since then. But just now, mostof all you. It is past time I did more for you. I wonder whatyou should most like? They tell me you like to sing?”

“Yes indeed, great sir, and I have made up some words my-self. Mostly though I listen around the fire and try to remem-ber and sing again what I have heard the next day.”

The two sat side by side on the pine scented ridge. In thedistance a stag called out.

“I think it is time you learned more, lad. You should learn itfrom me, it is me you should be listening to about such things.Don’t get involved in little tales. So many people will just tellyou anything. But you can trust what I tell you: you under-stand that, don’t you? Come to me every month, on this fullmoon night, and I can teach you the singer’s art. How shouldyou like that?”

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Beth

His eyes were very intent on Damariel, and a great desireclutched at his heart, but the picture of Shomal’s stern lookdrifted through his mind.

“Sir, I do not think that my father will allow it.”The seer laughed again, differently this time, and put his

arm around Damariel’s shoulders as he replied.“Your father, hey? I don’t suppose Shomal would allow it

without some inducement. But let me speak with him aboutthe matter. I may well be able to persuade him. Your mother,now she will certainly agree. But you now, Damariel: whatshould you like?”

Damariel paused, thinking a while, and before he couldspeak the other man went on in a great rush of words.

“It’s not just singing, you know. Let me teach you otherthings. And perhaps we should meet twice a month, not once.There’s all kinds of things I could tell you. Do you know howwe remember the way north from here to Damaseq, or downsouth through the Nagb to the border forts of the Mitsriy?”

He shook his head, intrigued. He only knew of the localtracks and their destinations just a short distance away, thefour towns themselves, and in more general terms the where-abouts of their immediate clan allies and neighbours.

The seer nodded.“Let it be settled, then. Come to my house tomorrow around

sunset, and we shall make a start. No sense waiting for nextmonth, we must make a start right away.”

He stood and held out a hand to help Damariel, facing himand suddenly quite serious.

“As for tonight, you know, I was up on the northern fell andfound one of Ethan’s chickens. I took it back to his house.That was all. No need to tell anyone, no need to remember it,is there? People will talk about all sorts of things, and there’sno need to listen to them. Just a lost chicken. Is that clear?”

Damariel thought of the couple coming out of the housedoor, the kiss shared in the moonlight, the lingering hands,the lack of chickens, and weighed it all against poems and

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journeys to distant places. He nodded, took the older man’shand, and stood up.

“Surely it is as you say, honoured one. I am sure I canremember it as you say.”

“Good. Then speak no more of it. Just think of all thethings I can teach you. Now, go home, greet your family fromme, and tell them I shall visit tomorrow, in the middle of theafternoon.”

He started up the ridge towards the high place, and after afew moments Damariel continued his own journey, round theedge of the hill and past a few outbuildings to go between hisaunt’s house and his mother’s. Baruk and Bashur were bothup on the roof, arranging the wicker screens and bedding.Inside, Sosanneth was asleep on her mother’s lap. Shomallooked up at him as he pushed the door open. The cross edgehad faded a little from his voice, but still hovered in the back-ground. Damariel closed the door quietly, warily.

“All done? You were gone a long time?”“I met the seer on the way back, just down below the high

place. He says he will visit tomorrow in the middle of theafternoon.”

Shomal and Yeresheth looked at each other across Sosan-neth’s sleeping body, then Yeresheth looked down and brushedthe girl’s hair back from her face. Shomal stood up and rear-ranged his tools in the corner, facing away from the others. Inthe silence the voices of the two brothers could be heard fromthe roof.

“Did he say why? What did he say?”“No, mother, he did not say all that was on his heart. He

said he had not seen as much of me, all of us I mean, as hewould wish. Surely he will tell you rather than me?”

Yeresheth looked up at him again, her eyes suddenly moistand sparkling in the oil light’s flame. Shomal seemed finallysatisfied with his tools and sat down again.

“Of course he will. Do we have something to set in front ofhim when he comes?”

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Beth

His wife glanced around at the kitchen stocks and nodded,and he stood up again, restless and impatient.

“Make sure that he feels welcome here, Yeresheth. Thatshould certainly be easy enough for you. Damariel, tell yourbrothers he is coming and get them to bed. You as well, get tobed. Here, take Sannah with you.”

There was bustle for a few moments. Sosanneth woke atthe movement and cried in protest until Damariel settled withher on the roof and rocked to and fro with her while speakingto the brothers.

All four children settled down to sleep. Parental voicesdrifted up from the main body of the house. He strained tohear but could not make out the words. Shomal was doingmost of the talking, long trails of speech mostly ending inquestions. Yeresheth was quieter and shorter in her replies.

Shomal came up first, and with a wordless heavy sigh un-rolled his bedding and lay down. Much later Yeresheth cameup. She bent down by Damariel as she passed, and kissedhis cheek softly before moving further on to lie down nearShomal.

Damariel looked up at the moon through the woven screenbranches and wondered what had happened.

Iqnu came down the next day in the late afternoon. Atthe time, Shomal was down at his olive trees with Baruk.Bashur, under protest, had been inside watching Sosannethwhile Yeresheth baked some bread rolls with honey. Damarielwas outside the house moving the chickens around so he couldsearch for stray eggs and clean their area, but hearing theseer’s voice he straightened up, abruptly noticing the strawand feathers scattered across his smock.

Iqnu nodded to him gravely and went to the door. As Yere-sheth noticed him, she smiled, warmly, a little shyly, brushedher hands clean of flour, and then kissed him on both cheeks.

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Bashur was sent running to fetch Shomal, and Damarielhurried to finish his work, aware that the two adults werewatching him as he did so. Yeresheth had her hand on Iqnu’sarm and leaned in to him as she talked, so Damariel couldnot hear her words. Iqnu shook his head and laughed aloud,and she smoothed back her kef and smiled happily. Lookingup, Damariel saw that Shomal was outside, about to arrive,and was frowning heavily at the sound of Iqnu’s laughter.Yeresheth moved quickly away from the seer and tended tothe bread buns as her husband turned the corner of the walland came across the open area to the door. He looked impa-tiently at Damariel.

“Leave that now, lad, leave it till later. Get yourself cleanedup and join us.”

When Damariel joined them he found the three adults sit-ting on stools. Sosanneth was out of sight in the side room.Catching his mother’s signal, he picked up the tray of warmbread pieces and served them to the seated adults. Lookingaround, he gauged that he was not supposed to eat any him-self, so stood by the door and waited. Shomal had just finishedformally welcoming the seer to Yeresheth’s house. Iqnu, see-ing he had finished, thanked him properly and then gesturedat Damariel.

“Your boy is a credit to your household.”Yeresheth smiled. Shomal said, “As are my other two sons,

sir.”“Of course. But for today I am thinking of Damariel. I have

a mind that he should learn something of the work of a singer.You know that the son born to Qerith soon after our marriagewas taken by sickness three years ago.”

He paused, and there was a moment of silent rememberingprayer.

“And our daughter Asherith is now married to Mahur-Baal,first son of the great chief Yad-Nesherim, victorious over hisenemies and glorious in battle. She now lives up at Giybonand has chosen not to walk our path. So I have nobody here

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Beth

to assist me and Qerith with the songs, and we have a dutyto find those who are able. I have heard that Damariel has atalent, and I wish to train him in it. Who can say where thatmight lead?”

Shomal looked at Damariel, then back at Iqnu.“It is a great honour, sir, but you must know how useful the

lad is. He works here and down at the olive patch. I am notsure how we could manage without his help. Perhaps sometimes of the year, but surely not at harvest.”

Yeresheth made as if to speak, but Iqnu made a little move-ment of his hand and she remained silent. Shomal saw theexchange, and his eyes narrowed a little.

“Of course, I understand how much you need him. ButShomal, we are not talking about him coming to be with meevery day. To begin with, one day each month, or perhapstwo at most. Sometimes just evenings as the light fades. Ofcourse he would be free to work with you at other times. If heshows he has talent, perhaps I could apprentice him in time,but he must be proved first. And then we would come to someproper form of arrangement. Shomal, if you were willing todo this, I think you would find me extremely grateful to you.Very grateful indeed. Now, I think you have a dispute withEmeq about where the wall should go around your olives? Fora start, then, I could smooth things with Emeq, talk to him,help him to see your side of things. Perhaps you would find mygratitude more useful than a few hours work from Damariel.”

Shomal put on an expression as though thinking carefully,but all of them, including Damariel, had seen the quick lookof satisfaction that crossed his features.

“Ah, well sir, though it will be hard to lose Damariel forthose hours, I see that your need of assistance is greater thanmine.” He paused, and the silence stretched a little in thehouse. “Yes, I agree to this. Let it happen as you say.”

Yeresheth had been looking at him with a careful lack ofexpression, and in the little pause before his final words sheglanced at Damariel and rolled her eyes a little in exaspera-

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tion. Damariel kept himself from smiling, feeling conspirato-rial. Iqnu nodded expansively and looked at Damariel.

“So, lad, it seems that the arrangement is acceptable toShomal. And, no doubt, to your mother. Are you still contentwith it?”

“Yes indeed, great sir, with all my heart.”“Excellent. Be up at the high place just before sunset to-

morrow and we shall make a start.”He rose, accepted farewell blessings from the house, took

one more of the bread buns, and left. Damariel kept quiet,seeing the look on Shomal’s face. He picked up a broom andbegan to sweep the doorway. Yeresheth had busied herself inputting cooking equipment away. Shomal shook his head.

“Speaks as though he owns the boy. Throws me little bitsand pieces to make up. Not that I don’t appreciate the helpwith Emeq. Of course I do. But in this very room to put me ina corner like that. It’s not right.”

Yeresheth stopped working, glanced briefly at Damariel andthen turned to Shomal.

“Perhaps Damariel could fetch his brothers while we talkabout this, Shomal? I expect you left them working down atthe olive field?”

“That’s where my sons work, to be sure. Yes, Damariel, goand fetch them back here.”

Damariel turned to go, but Shomal continued, “But makesure you’ve cleaned everything there before you leave. Closeit all down for the night properly. I don’t want to have to goback down myself.”

By the time the three boys got back a meal was nearlyready. Sosanneth had woken up and was putting bread on theplates. Shomal was doing something noisily up on the roof.Yeresheth’s face was very red and her expression very set.She hugged the three boys as they arrived, and sent Bashurup the stairs to fetch Shomal. When he came in, he exchangedglances with Yeresheth, sat down on a stool near the door, andthen called Damariel to him.

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“Learn what you can from the seer, lad. Make us proud ofyou. Just make sure it does not get in the way of your workfor me.”

Baruk and Bashur looked at each other. Baruk spoke first.“What’s this, Damari? Father, what’s this talk about the

seer?”“The seer wants Damariel to learn some of his songs and

what have you. One or two evenings a month he’s to go to thehigh place and learn all that.”

Baruk clapped his older brother on the shoulder. “That’swonderful, Damari.” But Bashur pulled a face. “How come hegets to do that? What about his work here? Will we have todo that for him?”

Shomal turned to Bashur and sat him on his knee.“Nothing unfair will happen to you because of this, son.

Damariel knows that he must do his share. I’ll see to it thatthe work is shared out fairly.”

Sosanneth was watching the four of them, clearly not verysure what was happening or why. Yeresheth put an arm roundher and sat her down before ladling stew onto the plates.Baruk started to ask Damariel what he would be learning, butin truth Damariel had no very clear idea, and Shomal startedtalking at length about what the olives would need in the nextfew months. Much later, as they settled for sleep on the roof,Baruk asked him again. The two boys spoke for a few minutesuntil Bashur started to complain at the noise they were mak-ing, and their mother came up from the room below to makesure they were settled.

Damariel found, month after month as he spent time withIqnu, that the seer was well intentioned, and diligent so longas the effort did not take him out of his way, but was inclinedto make large promises that he had no intention of keeping.That very first evening, the day after Iqnu had been to theirhouse, he spoke to Damariel of the lands and peoples livingnearby. Damariel listened with fascination at the size of theworld and its variety, though Iqnu seemed to have actually

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visited very little of it. Seeing Damariel’s open mouth, Iqnulaughed and said that by the next spring, if Damariel wouldlearn the way-list, he would take him down to Shalem andshow him the great high place there, or maybe they wouldgo beyond that to follow the desert trails down to the Mitsriyhome land.

Every night through the winter, Damariel recited the routenames to himself as he fell asleep, strange places that had nomeaning to him but spoke of lakes and ruins, hills and clefts,an exotic terrain inhabited by strangers. His dreams kepthim wandering all around these distant places, where peoplespoke in a way he could not understand.

The spring came, and there were reasons why they couldnot go. In time Damariel became used to the offer of promise,the failure to deliver. But the learning itself, the songs and thepoems, the reading and the writing, the glimpses into otherplaces and other times; all this he loved, and revelled in theexpanding sense of his place in a mighty world.

By careful choice of words over a few months, he had man-aged to persuade Iqnu to see him regularly twice a monthinstead of erratically. Iqnu in turn had persuaded Shomalthat his gratitude was worth the absence of Damariel on theseevenings.

The weeks skipped past, with Damariel impatient for thepassing of time in between the evenings with the seer. Theyalways met at the high place, or in a rough lean-to shelternear the caves of the ancestors if the weather was poor, neverin the seer’s house. Damariel hardly ever met Qerith, hardlyeven remembered that Iqnu had a wife.

During this time, Damariel became acutely aware of isola-tion. His younger brothers, especially Baruk, seemed to findit easy to win acceptance from most of the other families. Forhis own part, especially with households linked more closely

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to Shomal than Yeresheth, or which for some reason were atodds with Iqnu the seer, he experienced a hesitation, a block-age in the easy flow of community life. It was never an overtrejection, more of a withholding or drawing aside.

He found himself spending increasing amounts of time withQetirah and Kothar, who found the same difficulty of relation-ship. It was as though these two were more truly his familythan Baruk and Bashur, and their company was more satisfy-ing than that of the others of his own age.

Sometimes these others, or more commonly their parents,would treat them with a kind of awe. But more often therewas a faint sense of being made fun of, of words spoken behindtheir back that they could not comprehend.

The three friends could no longer meet and play down atthe stream, but they found other ways to be with each other asoften as they could. Damariel also found that their householdswere places where he found peace more easily than his own.Yeresheth clearly loved him deeply, but Shomal’s mood andattitude were unpredictable.

In contrast, Kothar’s parents, Labayu and Tamar, madehim as welcome as if he was Kothar’s own brother. Labayutried for a time to teach them both skills of hunting and trap-ping, but while Kothar absorbed them with ease, Damarielfumbled in the making of traps and snares.

They had no other children, and from time to time Damarieland Kothar would come in from outside to find their mothersin close conversation, with Tamar’s eyes intent, fixed brightlyon Sosanneth as she moved about the kitchen area.

The two boys grew very close at this time, until Damarielfelt that he had three brothers rather than two. But one of thethree was his own age, and felt with something of the same in-tensity as himself the isolation of being a child of the god, andDamariel found himself naturally gravitating more into hiscompany. As time went by, Kothar developed his own strate-gies for dealing with the situation, cultivating a rather boldand brash exterior.

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So Damariel spent a great deal of time at Tamar’s house,enjoying the easy company of an adult man who welcomedhim around the table instead of seeing his presence as criti-cism. He had less opportunity to go into Qetirah’s home, butwhen he did Caleb would usually invite him into the long ex-tra room that contained his little smelting furnace. There hewould see scraps of metal melting in the heat and transmut-ing into a multitude of shapes – brooches and animal traps,tools and arrowheads.

Caleb and Kinreth were both as deeply attached to Qetirahas to their joint daughter Laylah, and Damariel never onceheard issues of birth held up between them. Then he wouldgo back to Yeresheth’s house, and feel all over again the dif-ference that lineage could make.

By the time late spring was turning into early summer,Damariel realised with absolute certainty that Iqnu was noteven going to take him to Shalem, such a short way along thetrack. He also started to notice that life at home was deteri-orating. During the summer Yeresheth started to talk to himhow in the autumn he would be declared a boy no longer, butrather a young man. Baruk wanted to listen in, as he wasonly a year and a half younger. Then Bashur would want tobe part of the conversation, and complain loudly to Shomal ifnot accommodated.

Before long, Yeresheth began to find places and times totalk to Damariel outside the house, on the way to and fromthe high place, or in Nerith’s house across the way. Bashurtried then to find covert ways to listen in, and reported backto Shomal what was said. Several times a month the childrenwould try to settle to sleep against a background of raisedvoices and anger. Yeresheth’s face was more often tinged withred, and her lips more often pursed with frustration.

In conversation, Yeresheth would support Damariel andSosanneth, while Bashur could always be expected to sidewith Shomal. Baruk was in an uneasy middle ground, drawntowards both sides for different reasons, and an object of com-

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petition and intense diplomacy. More often than not he wouldfind himself yielding to Bashur’s sibling pressure.

There was a time late the following summer, when the fes-tival of the new wine was only days away and the communitywas preparing itself for the celebration, that Damariel laterlooked back on as a turning point. It was one of the prepara-tion days, a day of fasting followed by a gathering of the wholecommunity up at the high place. There had been a sacrifice ofa pigeon with some oil and wine, and then a time of singing.

In an unusual time of family togetherness, all six had satlistening while several different people had stood to offer con-tributions, and then Iqnu and Qerith had related one of thestories from the dawn of the world.

Away from your word the oceans fled back –from the voice of your thunder they hurried away –

up over the mountains down into the valleys,back into the place you established for them.

By the end, the sea had been tamed by the lord of all theearth, and tied back within its shores as a mother would swad-dle her baby. There it could froth and roar, but no longer spillover the tops of the hills.

At the end there was an appreciative clamour; whateverother opinions people held of the seer, all agreed that he andQerith were excellent at delivering the songs. After that some-one called out from the circle.

“Seer, tell us how we came to be living in these hills.”Iqnu turned to acknowledge the speaker, and then stood up

to look round at all of the assembled people.“I could tell that story, Issi, but tonight I am not the one

who should be recounting it to you all. There is someone herewho has a better right to tell that story than I. It is Mahiram,

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father of Danil, if he is willing. Mahiram, honoured in years,will you speak to us of that story tonight?”

Mahiram, sitting off to one side, looked up and nodded.There was a pause while Danil helped his elderly father for-ward. He sat on one of the stones, leaning on his staff, andthere was an expectant silence around the gathered people.Damariel had seen the old man a few times before, but hadnever heard him speak more than a few words. To his sur-prise Mahiram’s voice, though quavering from time to time,carried strongly around the circle, was confident in the threadof the story.

There was a holy silence as he prayed aloud, before launch-ing into the tale, speaking it instead of singing. It was onethat Damariel had heard before from Iqnu, and in simplifiedform from his own mother, but on this occasion there was agreat deal more to hear. Mahiram spoke as though he hadhimself been one of the settlers that came down from thenorthern hills, surviving marauders and the winter cold tofound the four towns here in these happy hills.

He knew that, in fact, the migration had been at least fourgenerations before the old man’s time, perhaps more, thatMahiram was as much a native of the hill country as he washimself. But during the telling Damariel was caught up in themovement of his people as though he held his own mother’shand on the mountain passes, gathered food with his broth-ers, carried his sister as she slept, and waited hungry in thecamp while his father hunted for game with the other men.

When he had finished there was a long, profoundly appre-ciative silence. Sosanneth had in fact fallen asleep, althoughin this world she was on Yeresheth’s lap. As Mahiram movedslowly back to his place in the circle, before the next recitationstarted, Shomal picked Sosanneth up and chivvied the otherchildren along.

They went back to their house down the path, with Barukand Bashur running ahead, racing to see who would arrivefirst. There was a bustle of activity, and as Damariel settled

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to sleep he heard Shomal go out again, back up to the celebra-tion.

The next day started slowly, and all four children were upand about well before either of the adults. They began makingnoise, so Yeresheth gave them some food and water, and thensent them away down to the olive field with some instructionshow to spend their time usefully.

They ran about for a while in the sunshine, deciding thatwas the best way to scare birds, then started to fit some of theloose dry stones back into place in the low surrounding wallwhere they had become dislodged over the summer.

After a while Baruk, who was in charge of the water skin,called a halt and they all sat leaning against the wall of thelittle hut.

They started talking about the celebration of the previousnight. After a while, Baruk suddenly turned to Damariel.

“Look, Damari, you’ve been learning all this time with theseer. When are they going to get you doing something?”

Damariel shook his head.“It’s not like that, Baruk. Not yet. Maybe if he takes me on

properly as his apprentice some time. But just now he won’tlet me, I know he won’t. He’ll say I don’t know enough to do itright.”

“But that’s not fair. I bet you’d do it better than some ofthem. That Pirizzi, now, he was really boring.”

They all laughed.Bashur broke in, “What else would you expect from some-

one from that family. Mum always says they’re no good”.He pulled a face that was just remotely like the expression

Pirizzi had had as he had been singing last night, and theylaughed some more.

“Alright, Bashur, he surely was boring. Truly. But that oldman, now, Hanna Taliy’s grandfather, he was really good.”

They nodded, each remembering the old man telling themigration story. Baruk spoke first again after the memory-filled pause.

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“What did the seer mean when he said he shouldn’t be theone telling that story? Why did Hanna’s grandfather get to doit?”

“Well, you see, in the circle like that then the one who ev-eryone agrees knows most about the story gets to tell it. If theseer had started to tell it himself, lots of them would have dis-approved. So he avoided that by looking around for someonehe knew would tell it better than he would.”

Sosanneth looked at him with wide eyes.“What do you mean, disapproved? Would they all have got

up and shouted at him to make him stop?”“Oh no, Sannah. Nothing like that. But they’d have showed

him he’d done wrong to tell it himself. Maybe some wouldhave wandered off before he finished. Or maybe they’d just lis-ten badly by laughing at the wrong time, or something. He’dknow what they meant. He knows that the best person shouldalways be the one to tell the story.”

“Are you best at telling any stories?”Damariel shook his head.“Not yet, Sannah. Maybe one day. But not yet, not in a

circle when the whole village is gathered together.”Baruk jumped up with excitement.“Damari, look, you’d be best at telling stories here, just

with us four. We don’t know anything like that. Tell us some-thing you’ve been learning.”

Damariel looked at him. “Well, I suppose so. I don’t know.The seer hasn’t said anything about that.”

Bashur shook his head. “I don’t think it’s right, Baruk. Dadhasn’t said anything to any of us about this. Even if the seerhad said something, we can’t just do it. I mean, he isn’t ourfather, is he? He can’t tell us what to do on dad’s land, it’s nothis place to do that at all.” Sosanneth looked up at him. “Butit’s mummy’s house, isn’t it, not daddy’s?”

Bashur looked annoyed with her. “That’s not the point. Theseer can’t say what we should do here. I don’t think Damarishould do this, Baruk.”

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Beth

“Well, I do. Come on, Damari, tell us something. You’ve gotto do it better than Pirizzi did last night. What do you say,Sannah?”

Sosanneth nodded, looking from one brother to another inturn. Damariel scratched his head, wondering what, in fact,he did know well enough to tell them. Deciding on somethingsuitable, he sat up in readiness. Bashur stood up.

“Don’t you dare. If you do, I’m going to get dad. He’ll stopyou.”

Damariel and Sosanneth looked at each other, then back atBaruk. They knew that he was the only one with any chanceof changing Bashur’s mind. Baruk held out the water skin toBashur.

“Come on, Bashur, just for a few minutes until we startthe next job mother told us. She’d want us to have a breaksometimes. We’ve already scared off the birds and fixed thosebits of the wall. The next thing is gathering up the fallen bitsof wood and that won’t take us long. We’ll all do that togetherafter Damari has told us something.”

Bashur sat down again, refusing the water. He said noth-ing, but he looked unhappy and made sure he was facing an-gled away from the others. Damariel launched into the storyof how the first man and woman were made in the meadow offlowers, how they walked together in the morning and namedthe beasts as the gods paraded each of them in turn. He knewthere were parts of the story that Iqnu had never taught him,would not tell him until he was older, but he knew enough tomake it sound complete in itself. He did not try to sing it, butkept something of the great rhythms alive in his words.

The others were listening closely to him – even Bashur wasleaning in to catch the unfolding drama – when they heardShomal’s voice calling to them as he approached. Bashurjumped up and ran round the corner of the little hut towardshim. Damariel and Baruk looked at each other, wonderingwhat he would say, but they heard only normal happy greet-ings. Hastily, before Shomal came into view, they both retied

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Richard Abbott

their kefs into a fashion he would consider decent. Sosannethran after Bashur, and the older boys collected the water skinand tools and followed her. Shomal had picked up Sosannethand was holding her over his head. He was obviously in a goodmood.

“Ah, my pretty Sannah’s here as well. How’s my most beau-tiful daughter?”

He lowered her to the ground again and saw the boys com-ing. He glanced around here and there, saw some places wherethe wall had been fixed and nodded approvingly at them all.

“You’ve been working well, I see. Just having a rest wereyou? That’s what your mother and I have been doing, havinga rest.”

“Yes, father,” chorused the children together, and Bashuradded, “but Damari was doing some song that he heard fromthe honoured seer. I didn’t know if we ought to be doing that.”

Shomal shrugged.“No harm done, so long as you’ve done the work first. It’s

only a bit of fun. Nothing serious. You were right to tell me,though, Bashur. Good boy.”

Baruk and Damariel exchanged quick glances, relieved atthe outcome, though Damariel had inwardly seethed at thedismissal of the sacred memory of the community. Bashurgrinned at them both. Then Shomal sat in the shade of thehut while the four children collected twigs and larger piecesof fallen wood and piled them together.

Much later they all walked back up towards the house.As usual, Baruk and Bashur ran on ahead. Sosanneth heldShomal’s hand as they climbed the ridge; Damariel walked acouple of paces behind. Before they were in sight of the house,Shomal stopped and turned to Damariel.

“Look, lad, I know you’re doing this with the seer. That’sfine, he’s seen to it that I don’t lose out because of it. Quiteuseful, in fact. But I don’t want you getting my boys all mixedup with that. They’re going to do a proper day’s work on myland, or learn a skill. A trade of some sort. It’s all right for

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you to do these songs and all that. But don’t you get my boysall confused. That’s not the road I want my sons to walk. Doyou understand?”

Damariel could do nothing but nod in reply. Sosanneth,who had let go of Shomal’s hand when they stopped, took holdof Damariel instead as they went the last few steps up thetrack to the house. Back indoors, Baruk and Bashur werereciting a long catalogue of all the work they had done in theolive field to Yeresheth, who was sitting mending some clothesof Shomal’s while the bread finished baking. They paused af-ter a while, trying to think what else to weave into the telling,when Sosanneth suddenly spoke up.

“Mummy, then we all sat together and had a drink of waterand Damari told us a story about how people first happenedthat the seer had taught him and Bashur didn’t like it andthen we came back here and daddy said Damari mustn’t tellthings like that any more because it would mean Baruk andBashur wouldn’t do jobs he wanted them to do when they growup. But I liked it and Damari was good.”

Yeresheth looked at Shomal. He shook his head.“Yeresheth, it wasn’t like that.”Sosanneth went over to Yeresheth and sat on her lap, look-

ing up at Shomal.“But daddy, you said to Damari that he could sing with the

seer but you didn’t want your sons getting all mixed up in itbecause you had other work for them.”

Yeresheth smoothed Sosanneth’s hair behind the ribbonshe still wore sometimes in and around the house insteadof a proper kef. “All right, Sannah, hush now.” She put theneedlework down beside her and glanced briefly at Bashur,who stood off to one side, watching her.

“All four of my children will do me honour in their own way.All four of them will use the talents they were given when theSeven Ladies watched over their birth. I’ll not hear that oneof them is more blessed than another, or of more value to thevillage.”

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She held Bashur’s gaze until he nodded once, and thenlooked at the others in the room in turn, ending with Shomal.“I’ll not hear that from anyone.”

She sat Sosanneth beside her and turned to look at thebread in the oven. There was a little silence in the room, un-til Shomal noisily rearranged some tools in one corner, sayingsomething under his breath about believing a daughter whowas barely able to talk, instead of a husband who could speakfor himself. Bashur went over to help him, and they movedsome things outside and some other things in. Yeresheth ig-nored the whole burst of activity, told Baruk and Damariel toclean and flatten the roof where the wind had caught it duringthe night, and showed Sosanneth how to recognise when thebread was cooked.

On the roof, Baruk glanced over into the courtyard whereShomal and Bashur were sharpening some of the tools, thencame back to Damariel before speaking.

“Look, Damari, I don’t know what’s going on. What’s gotinto mum and dad?”

Damariel, feeling wise with the benefit of his extra eigh-teen months, shrugged and packed down some of the looseroofing.

“Mum likes what I do. Dad doesn’t. He says I’m not reallyhis son, that you should have the rights of being his firstborn.So really he doesn’t want anything to do with me. The onlyreason he lets me go to the seer at all is so he can get betterdeals for his olives, or get someone else to give him somethingfor nothing.”

Baruk sat beside him and helped work some loose strawback into place where the wind and weather had teased itaway from the rest.

“I’ve heard that from some of the older boys. You and Qeti-rah and Kothar, all the same, they say. And Galmet. And thatyounger boy, what’s he called.”

“Yad-Shalim.”“Yes, him. What is it about you all? “

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“I don’t know, Baruk. They won’t tell me. But you see it,don’t you? And the others in the town too. Mostly they don’ttalk about it at all. Then if it comes up they either back awayand go all strange, or they make fun of us.”

Baruk nodded, and after a brief pause continued.“But you are my brother, Damari, aren’t you?”Damariel carefully let go of the springy wooden lath and

made sure it stayed in place.“Yes I am, Baruk. But by mum, not dad, if I’ve heard people

right. He never forgets it, won’t let her forget it either. It’sdifferent for Qetirah and Kothar, both their dads are pleasedwith it.”

“How come? Weren’t they. . . ” he paused and looked cau-tiously about, dropping his voice even quieter, “weren’t theymarried when they had you? But so what? That girl up thestreet, Niri-Shadday, you know she’s about to have a baby andeveryone says it was Nesher, but they’ve never been marriedup at the stones.”

He glanced round briefly, left and right.“Have you heard what some of the other lads were saying

about her, you know, like Yusuf?”Damariel nodded quickly, and the two brothers grinned at

each other before Damariel sobered again.“I don’t know, Baruk. I asked the seer once but he wouldn’t

tell me. Said I could know when I was older. They all saythat. Same with some of the songs, Iqnu won’t teach me someof them yet. Keeps saying I have to wait until I’m older toget to do them. I hope they’re worth the wait. But I feel likeI have nothing to do with Shomal at all, like he’s just somekind of uncle or something. The older I get, the worse I thinkit gets. Look, Baruk, you and Bashur look like him, same hair,same eyes, same hands, whatever. Sosanneth has a bit of him,even if she’s more like mum. But I don’t. It’s like every timehe looks at me he sees a foreigner.”

“Like one of those Mitsriy we saw last year?”His eyes widened.

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“You don’t think that mum, I mean, maybe she. . . Beforeshe married dad, I mean, maybe, do you think. . . ?”

He trailed off as Damariel put a finger to his lips.“Baruk, don’t even think of saying that downstairs. Espe-

cially not to Bashur, he’ll just tattle it to someone else andwho knows what will happen. Anyway, I don’t think that’sit at all. I just don’t know. Nobody ever tells me. Look, wehave to go down or he’ll think I’m teaching you something Ishouldn’t. Baruk, look, thank you. But you need to keep withBashur when he’s around. Don’t get into trouble because ofme.”

Baruk pursed his lips, then finally nodded. They wentback down, to where Yeresheth had baked bread and gath-ered them all around the little table to eat.

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Gaml

IBALATU YEAR 15 – BUL YEAR 16

REFRESHING LIKE RAIN are my words,distilling like dew is my speech,

like cloudbursts upon the grassland,or rainfall upon the young crops.

Richard Abbott

BARUK CAME OUT OF DANIL’S HOUSE and set off across theridge towards home. After completing his childhood and

passing through the ceremonies to be counted as a young manof the community, he had deliberately set out to be noticed byDanil and the others of the raiding party. So far he had notsucceeded in being really included in that group, and Danil’sown son was too different in age from him to make anything tohis advantage out of a potential friendship, but he entertainedhopes. Bashur, almost the same height despite their year sep-aration in age, followed him as closely as possible and wasclearly attempting to make every available use of the siblingrelationship.

Today, Baruk had managed to spend time with Danil with-out his brother. He smiled to himself as he joined the maintrack down from the high place. He was genuinely fond ofBashur, for all his over-close attachment, and most of the timewas happy that he was there with him like a shadow. Thoughthey were not twins, they understood each other’s moods andfeelings better than most brothers or friends, even when theydisagreed over their thoughts and opinions. Mostly, he appre-ciated Bashur’s presence nearby. Some days, though, it wasgood to go on his own.

He heard his name being called, and turned to see Damarielhurrying down towards him from the high place. He waiteduntil he caught up with him.

“Just going home?”“Yes. Dad let me off some time in the olive field this after-

noon. Reckoned we’d done enough for the day or something.So I took the chance to spend a bit of that time with Danil.”

“That went well?”“Yes. He’s always helpful, whenever I ask he’s happy to

talk to me about how the raids are done. I’m learning a lot.There’s not so many of them go regularly, never quite enoughfor what they want to bring back. So I think I can talk myway into going with them if they think I’m keen. Well, and ifI know what I’m doing.”

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They walked a bit further in silence together.“Been up with the seer, then, Damari?”Damariel nodded.“And what did you learn today?”“He’s been teaching me these last months how to read not

just our own writing, but the older stuff too. Like they usedway back before our time. Actually they still do in the bigtowns, and if you have to write to the Mitsriy ever.”

Baruk nodded, not especially interested yet in the topic,but before he could speak, Damariel rushed on with enthusi-asm.

“Baruk, I never knew before today that a woman from here,from our own town, wrote to the Mitsriy governor once.”

“Oh yes? What did she say?”“Nothing much, really, just warning him about a big raid

between two of the nearby towns. The usual double-dealingand trickery they do in those other places. But she wrote tothem, Baruk, and they took notice. She called herself the ladylioness and they thought she was like our queen.”

Baruk laughed.“They didn’t know much about us, then. Though the lion

bit wasn’t far off.”Damariel joined in the humour.“No, I suppose not. But they took notice of her all the same.

Respected her.”“She can’t have been from mum’s family or we’d have heard

about her years ago. If there was anything like that in herancestors she’d have told us.”

“That’s true. I don’t know if she was a chief ’s wife or theseer at the time, or even just one of the village women whocould write. But I saw the copy of what she wrote and havebeen puzzling over it all morning.”

At that point they both stopped and looked back up the hill.A sudden shouting had started somewhere up near the highplace, men’s voices raised in fierce anger. Baruk took a step ortwo back up the hill, but Damariel stopped him.

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“Do you think we ought to?”“Don’t be ridiculous, Damariel. Whatever it is, I’m not go-

ing to miss it.”They set off again along the ridge, and started running as

the shouting began to grow louder. Like them, others werecoming out of houses, looking, and starting to gather togetherup at the heart of the community. At the stones, Ethan theshepherd, his large face red and his large fists clenched, wasbeing held away from Iqnu by three of the other men. Qerithhad pulled her kef down over her face and was facing awayfrom them off to one side, leaning on the wall of the seer’shouse, her expression completely hidden.

The two boys joined the gathering circle of villagers, Barukpushing through to the front so he could see, and Damarielfollowing. Ethan took a breath and shouted something inco-herent at Iqnu; the only words they could make out in thewhole tirade were “Isheth” and “while I was away”. Besidehim, Baruk heard Damariel gasp.

“What is it, Damari? What’s this about?”Damariel shook his head, his eyes fixed on Iqnu who was

looking around at the ring of villagers, clearly trying to elicitsympathy or help from the assembly. One of the older ladsnearby heard the question.

“Ethan says the seer took his woman for himself. While hewas away up along the ridge with the flocks. Just before youcame he was saying she confessed it all to him when he gotback today. Over a year all told they’ve been at it with eachother, so he says. Not just once, you know. All while he wasaway with the flocks. And in her own house, too. Not like itwas somewhere else.”

“Is it true?”“No idea. But Ethan’s all a sweat. Look at him. He’s called

the seer both thief and liar, and the seer hasn’t said anythingback.”

“Where’s Isheth? What does she say?”The other shrugged.

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“Never seen her yet. Maybe she’s got a tale to tell too, butright now she’s not here to tell it.”

Ethan’s parents, Hinnah and Nawar, had arrived. Nawarwent over to his son and gripped his arms, waving away themen who had been holding him away from Iqnu. Hinnah wentoff with Danil’s wife Rivkah towards Isheth’s house. In thesudden quiet they heard Ethan’s voice as he spoke to Nawar.Most of what he said was indistinct, but every so often oneword or other would burst out loud. Nawar listened withoutcomment for some time, still keeping hold of his son as thoughhe might burst away at any moment.

Qerith moved away from the house to one side and saton one of the flat stones, her face still covered. Shelomith-Rahmay went and sat with her. Nawar looked very sombre ashe turned towards Iqnu, who glanced around the circle again,still trying to gauge whether the mood of the community wasfor or against him. But before Nawar could speak, Rivkahcame running in, across to where Qerith and Shelomith sat,her kef all awry and blood on the sleeve of her smock.

“He’s tried to kill her. Beaten her something terrible. Butshe’s not yet gone across, not yet. Lady, she needs someonewho can heal. Lady, please come and do what you can for her.”

She knelt in front of Qerith, but there was no reply. Aftera long pause her veiled, hidden head shook once. Shelomithstood up slowly, looking suddenly much older than her years,beckoned to one of the other women to take her place withQerith, and went off with Rivkah. Someone on the other sideof the circle pushed their way through to the front.

“Her brother lives up at Woodlands. Azziy, they call him.Someone should get him. If Ethan’s killed her he’ll want toknow about it. The whole family will. It’ll be a matter ofhonour.”

Nawar thought about it for a long moment, several differ-ent emotions playing across his face as he inclined his headreluctantly. But before he could speak, Mahiram’s older voicebroke in.

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“Hear me now, there’s more involved than the honour oftwo families. It’s a seer’s matter and we need a seer to judgeon it now. So yes, send a boy up to Woodlands by all means,but send one up to Giybon as well to get a seer down here totell us how both Iqnu and Ethan are to be treated. They’llbe here tomorrow. If I’m heard there’ll be no judgement uponanyone’s family before then.”

There was a murmur of acceptance, approval around thecircle. Two lads were sent off in different directions up theridge. Debate began then as to where Ethan and Iqnu shouldbe kept while they waited for others to arrive, but before thiscould be resolved Rivkah and Shelomith returned with Hin-nah, all with torn kef and dust on their head and shoulders.Isheth had not been able to bear her injuries and had goneacross.

Ethan said nothing, did nothing, but looked away into thedistance with no expression on his face. Iqnu grimaced, madeas if to tear his own kef but then stopped. Nawar shook hishead and sat on one of the nearby stones, head in hands.Qerith shook off the hands of the woman who had been sit-ting with her, took off her sandals, walked across to Iqnu andslapped him across his face with them, twice, side-to-side, be-fore turning and walking away down the hill. Shelomith wentwith her.

It was as though Qerith’s actions stirred the communityinto action, as though they were like a judgement on the case.Two of the men nearby took Iqnu’s arms and led him intohis own house. They shut his door and at Mahiram’s word,pushed a boulder against the door so it could not be opened.Ethan turned as though to go with Nawar, but he shook hishead and turned away. Ethan stopped short, clearly shockedat his father’s response, and hung his head, speechless. Nawarwalked away without turning. Hinnah wavered, looking thisway and that between the two men, but eventually, with ananguished look at her son, followed her husband down thehill.

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Ethan was taken away to a hut adjoining one of the empty,unfamilied houses and put inside it, with a boulder againstthe door just as they had done with Iqnu. The group began todisperse, a buzz of conversation flowing like streams into thetracks and pathways, flooding into the doorways and filling upthe individual houses.

The next morning the door of the hut Ethan had been placedin had been broken open from the inside, and the stone out-side the seer’s house tossed to one side. Neither Ethan norIqnu were there. By the time Azziy arrived from Woodlands,Iqnu’s body had been found at the base of a low cliff just westof the village. He had died in the end from the fall, but beforethat had clearly been roughly treated.

Ethan was nowhere to be found, but a group of the menwho went hunting soon found the place where his tracks ledaway down into the valley, heading north-west towards thelowlands. They followed the trail for a few dozens of pacesbut then turned back to the village rather than go on. Thereseemed little point: the trail was perfectly clear but Ethanwas not stopping for anything and had several hours start.When Qerith was told she made no reply, but simply movedback from Shelomith’s home into the great house by the stonesand waited for the seer to arrive from Giybon.

In fact they came not from Giybon, but from Meyim, a mar-ried couple called Saniyahu and Halith. Halith went in tobe with Qerith, while Saniyahu called a meeting of the wholeadult community beside the town gate and heard the wholetale told. Baruk was not there, nor Damariel, as their adoles-cent status did not qualify them as part of the formal assem-bly, but they heard of it later.

Ethan was publicly declared no longer welcome in the vil-lage, though there seemed little chance he would attempt areturn. Iqnu, though already dead, was proclaimed no longera seer among the four towns, and denied any rights to a burialon their land or with his family. Azziy accepted the sum offour times the bride price that had been paid, renounced any

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further claim that there might be on Nawar’s family, and tookIshesth’s body to rest with her ancestors.

Nawar had remained silent as he had weighed out the sumin silver and other goods in front of them all. The house thatIsheth had shared with Ethan was to be pulled down andthe stones scattered here and there around the village fieldwalls and terraces, and such possessions as were in it wouldbe given to widows and orphans. Only the foundations and afew of the bigger wall-stones would be left to mark the placein the community memory.

Saniyahu and Halith were to take up the duty of town min-istry themselves, starting right away, that very day. The seershad already met and decided the matter in an all-night vigilof talk and prayer. A younger couple, not long past appren-ticeship, were to take their place at Meyim, releasing them tobegin at Kephrath. Qerith, still veiled and silent, speakingonly with Shelomith and Halith, packed her few belongingsand moved back to be near family just past Shalem.

That night Shomal held forth at considerable length aboutthe greedy and untrustworthy nature of seers in general andIqnu in particular. The whole episode had, it seemed, con-firmed all his opinions. Yeresheth kept silent during all this,and at length his whole speech dwindled away and they set-tled to sleep. She knelt down beside Damariel briefly at onepoint and whispered to him, “Whatever else you think, andwhatever else is said, remember he was good to you some-times”.

A week passed, and the open wounds of the communitybegan to heal towards rough scars. On the third day, whenShomal had started to talk again about the way a seer couldbetray the trust of others, Yeresheth had stood up and de-clared that from that day forward, so long as it was her house,there would be no more such talk. Shomal, taken aback atthe interruption, stopped, but not before a look of anger andfrustration had gripped his features. From then on the talkstopped inside the house, but not outside.

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Life and work went on. As he approached the house oneevening, Baruk saw a group of the young men and women,all a few years older than himself, talking together in a widerspace of ground between some of the houses. Issi’s son Yusufwas there, and Kalita, the rather intimidating eldest daugh-ter of the Kephrath family who had last provided the chief ofthe four towns. Several others had formed into a little constel-lation grouped around their centre. Tentatively he crossed tojoin them, and found a space among them. Kunor was speak-ing, but Baruk missed the start of what he had to say.

“So that Iqnu, I reckon he saw a good chance.”Yusuf laughed. “I never thought being a seer was any good.

But maybe there’s all sorts of opportunities.”Nikkallia, a northern-named girl who Baruk hardly knew,

spoke up suddenly.“I suppose you get to know all kinds of things about peo-

ple that most of us don’t hear. Or anyway you find things outmuch sooner. Like you say, opportunities. I wouldn’t mindfinding some opportunities like that, whether it’s with theseer or anyone else.” She glanced towards Kalita. “Since it’sone of the other towns that’s giving us the chief just now.”

Yusuf nodded.“I heard that they’re saying now that Ethan never touched

her like a wife anyway. Even when he was in the house, letalone being away half the time. I reckon she got bored waiting.Iqnu must have known that.”

Kalita nodded, pushing her kef back a little from her fore-head so that dark waves of hair showed in a little fringe.

“I wouldn’t put up with a man like that. If I wasn’t satisfiedI’d find another in no time. If someone’s going to share myhouse they’ll have to look after me nicely. Why else should Ilet them stay there?”

One of the other boys, Qeren, shook his head.

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“Easy to say, but I’m not so sure. He was out all weath-ers working for her. Kept her house comfortable and she wasnever in want for food, clothes, anything. She should havestayed faithful to him.”

Kalita tossed her head and smoothed the front of her smock.“Well, see if you can guess which one of you I’ll be wanting

to keep me company then, Qeren.”Before Qeren could say anything, Ayala broke in.“There’s Qerith too. Nobody takes her side in all this. Some-

one should speak up for her. She trusted him.”Kalita shook her head. “Well, she can’t have kept Iqnu very

interested. I mean, can she now? Why just let him roam offlike that and do nothing? Or maybe he was very good at pre-tence. I’m just not going to put up with that. And there’sanother thing too. I wouldn’t wait for any man to push mearound in my own house or down some cliff outside. Plenty ofways a woman can see a man away first if she finds a need to.”

Ayala and one of the other girls made a point of adjustingtheir own kefs into their place and walked off together. Kalitalaughed and looked around provocatively at the others.

“And what do you think about it, Baruk? Do you thinkmaybe you could look after me nicely?”

Baruk, caught by surprise and lost for an answer, felt him-self starting to flush as she looked appraisingly at him. Qerenspoke before he could think of anything. “Leave him alone,Kalita. Pick someone your own age to tease,” and Yusuf car-ried on, “Yes, Kalita, let’s leave these little ones to their owngames.”

Kalita laughed and strolled slowly off, deliberately passingvery close to Baruk so that the edge of her smock trailed alonghis arm. Yusuf and several of the others went with her. Baruktook a deep breath, grinned and nodded his thanks to Qeren,and turned away to the track leading home.

Approaching the house, he glanced up and saw Damarielsitting on the edge of the roof, looking out westward past thehouse of their aunt and across to the wooded ridge that rose

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on the other side of the valley. He had a broom in his hand,the bundled bristle of twigs resting on the rooftop, but was notworking at anything.

Baruk slipped past the mimosa and the open door withoutbeing noticed from inside and went up the ladder that waspropped up against the wall nearby, ending up just in front ofDamariel. His brother, a little startled by his sudden appear-ance, half got up and then relaxed again. Baruk grinned.

“Not quite finished your work yet?”Damariel shook his head and, without getting up, pushed

at a few nearby leaves with the end of the broom.“There now, look, that’s a bit more done.”Baruk laughed and sat beside him, swinging his legs over

the edge of the roof and tapping with his heels on the wall.“So what is it, Damari? You’ve been sitting around like this

for days.”Damariel sighed.“It’s since it all happened with Iqnu. You know, Baruk, I

was with him a lot, all the times I was learning from him.Maybe they think I had something to do with all that. Whatwill I do then? They might drive me out. They won’t let mego on learning. Not as if I ever got to be properly apprenticedto him. I’ve got no standing there to protect me. I don’t knowthis new seer or his wife. Maybe they think they don’t owe meanything. What if they don’t even want to know me? I don’twant a life just fiddling with the olive trees.”

“Just go and see them, then, Damari, just as soon as youwant. They’ve settled in now up by the stones. Let them knowwho you are and what you’ve done so far. There’s nobody elsein the town who can say that. They’ll want to meet you. Any-way, you didn’t have anything to do with Isheth and all that,did you?”

There was a silence that drew out rather too long. Aftera few moments Baruk looked up in surprise and caught hisbrother’s eye.

“Well, you didn’t, did you?”

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Eventually Damariel shook his head.“No, not really. No of course not, not so’s anyone could say

for sure. But I don’t know, Baruk. Maybe he just picked timesto see me so I could be, I don’t know, like the brushwood orundergrowth that he could hide in. It was always so vague,so. . . ” He waved his hands. “I don’t know. All always on histerms. Maybe he covered my eyes like he covered everyoneelse’s. Then there’s something else.”

Baruk nodded, but said nothing, and Damariel continuedafter a pause.

“And then you know, sometimes I think maybe Ethan isgoing to come back one night and do to me what he did bothto Isheth and Iqnu himself, if he thinks I was part of it all.”

He looked almost defiantly at Baruk for a moment beforesighing and pushing some more leaves around with the broom.“Do you think he would?”

Baruk shook his head and took the broom from him tosweep some dust off the edge of the roof.

“Ethan’s gone forever, we’ll not see him again around here.As if he would risk it all to come back all the way up hereespecially for you. But if he does come, I reckon that thatAzziy will take care of him. He looked like he could take careof himself quite nicely.”

“But that’s another thing, Baruk. He might have appealedto the old northern ways and claimed the right to extractwhatever vengeance he wanted on any woman of Ethan’s fam-ily. Anything. In exchange for Isheth, you know.”

Baruk stopped sweeping again and looked at him.“Anything?”Damariel nodded.“Anything at all. No limits at all. Seeing as how Isheth had

been killed like that. Out east they’d still do that now, but westopped all that since coming down here. But maybe Azziymight have tried to go back to that.”

“So that was why Nawar paid up that huge amount soquickly?”

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“That’s right. Hinnah is the only woman left of the familythat Azziy might have come after. Did you see Nawar’s facewhen they first talked about getting Azziy along? That waswhy. He just didn’t know what might come of it if he got in-volved. But now, you see, what if Azziy decides he didn’t getenough recompense on the day? I haven’t got silver to buyhim off. I’ve got nothing. But I suppose you think I’m beingridiculous.”

“Yes, completely. Why would Azziy come back for you? He’sprobably never heard of you. Anyway the seers would havesomething to say about it now the agreement has been sworn.So yes, you are indeed being ridiculous.”

They both laughed.“That’s good, then.”For a while they worked together at the more untidy parts

of the roof. Down below they could hear their mother teach-ing Sosanneth a song. Baruk looked around at the result andnodded.

“That’ll do. Tell you what though, Damari. I think I’m wellin with Danil and the others.”

“You are?”“I am. I think they’ll let me go with them soon. Maybe next

time they go, or the time after. Or maybe into next year. Soonthough. It’s taken a bit of time but I’m nearly in with them.”“That’s good. But mum won’t like it.”

Baruk shrugged.“She’ll be alright.”Down the track they could hear Shomal approaching with

Bashur.“We’d better go down. But look, Damari, I could probably

get you in as well if you wanted. That might do you good.”Damariel laughed.“You can’t really see me going out with you on that, can

you? You go and maybe I’ll sing you a song when you getback. That would be more fitting to my talents than headingoff down to the lowlands with you lot and starting to wave a

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sling and a knife around. More likely I’d do myself an injury,or else one of Danil’s crew, rather than some lowlander.”

“Right, a song! I’ll keep you to that. I’ll go down with them,and you sing the song afterwards. That’ll get you noticed aswell. Come on, let’s seal the bargain.”

They clasped hands and embraced, the way they had seensome of the traders do, and went down together into the mainpart of the house.

A week later they had been down at the olive patch all af-ternoon. Shomal had talked about a plan to clear out onecorner where some brambles were encroaching, and put ina fig tree instead. So they had cut off shoots and dug outroots, pulled out stones and used them to build up the perime-ter wall where it had become sparse and ragged, and finallysmoothed over the soil with hoes. Shomal had been pleasedwith the work and had sent the boys off to do as they wishedfor a time, while he stayed sitting in the doorway of the hutlooking at the outcome.

Bashur had run off home. Baruk and Damariel wandereddown to the stream and dipped hot hands and faces into theflow, then leaned back against one of the boulders lining thesteep side to the south of the water. A short distance uphillthey could hear the sounds of childhood play.

“Hardly seems any time since I was up there with all theothers.”

Damariel laughed and threw a dry seed case at him. “Well,it’s not. You’re barely past being a baby, you know.”

“Old man.”They sat with their feet in the stream.“Do you think dad will get a fig tree in there?”Damariel pulled a face.“No more than he got the vine up against the hut last year,

or the vegetable area planted out the year before. Good ideas

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but never finished off. Why do you think I want to get awayfrom all that?”

“If only he’d let us do it for real, we could get it all done. Heonly ever lets us do scrappy things while he decides what todo next.”

“And then watches while we do it.”“And then changes his mind anyway. You know, I wish he’d

just hand the olive patch over to me to work on it. Of courseI’d check things out with him, or mum, whoever, but I knowI’d get more done there than he does. There really would be afig tree, and a vegetable plot, whatever, neat as anything. Itcould really be something special if only he’d let me do that.Even mum would get to see it as a blessing to us all, andnot just somewhere he goes off to in order to get out of doingthings in the house. I could do that, you know. I think I coulddo that really well.”

“I think you could, too. You’ve got hands that make it allwork out there. Real skill at it. Maybe raise it up it as anidea with him some time soon. Give him a year or so to thinkabout it so it doesn’t all come out on one day. You’re good atthese plans that take a long time to come to fruit. Especiallywhen it comes to working with the land.”

They were silent for a few minutes. From their vantagepoint they could see some way downstream, to where the un-dergrowth swept back in a clearing either side of the water.Suddenly Kalita emerged from the side away from the village,ducking under the last overhanging branches and steppingneatly across the stream at a narrow place where two rocksleaned towards each other. Glancing once over her shoulder,she went up the rise directly towards the nearest houses. Thetwo boys leaned further back into the bushes as, shortly after,Yusuf followed her out of the woods, turning away from themto make a longer swing into the houses around the westernend of the ridge. Damariel laughed.

“Well now, there’s a coincidence, Yusuf turning up so soonafter Kalita. And from the same part of the woods too.”

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Baruk missed the irony in his voice and started to replyseriously. “Oh, but you see they do know each other. Theywere both together in a group talking together the other day.”He glanced at Damariel and realised.

“Oh yes. I see. You know that.”“Of course I do. And I think that maybe they know just a

little bit more of each other now. But Yusuf needs to watchout, she’ll not be a good one to get on your wrong side. Hecould find himself in a lot of trouble with her. Like in thestory where the fox tried to take a ride on a lion.” He sud-denly laughed. “Or perhaps in this case the fox who tried toride a lioness.” Baruk remembered how he had been so easilydiscomforted by Kalita, and how Qeren had helped him. Heshook his head. “So, Damari, have you been up to the highplace to see the new seers yet?”

“Well, yes I have. The evening before yesterday.”“And?”“I think they will carry on with me. I told them what sort

of things I did with Iqnu, how I wanted to go on. I thoughtit sounded a lot when I listed it all out, that they’d be quiteimpressed. But then they asked me about all kinds of thingsthat he never taught me at all. Baruk, I had no idea aboutso much of it. They were very kind to me about that. And ofcourse it was him, Iqnu, who decided what he would teach me,how was I to know? But now I know there was a very greatdeal he never did tell me. I think I must have missed outso much they reckon that I should have known. But I think itwill be alright. They say they’re going to think and pray aboutit, that it’s not something they can just say yes or no on thespot like that.”

“Is that how Iqnu began with you?”“No, no, not at all. One day we just started. Well, to be fair

maybe he did think and pray on his own but he never told meabout that side of it. Turns out there was a lot he didn’t tellme. But at the time he was quite motivated to make a quickstart.”

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“What do you mean?”Damariel shrugged, and after a moment Baruk carried on.“But they will take you on?”“I think so. I hope so. We just have to wait and see. They

said to come back in a week or so to see them again. It allseems quite serious for them. I just nodded as though it waswhat I expected and came away again. What else could I do?”

“Don’t they have children of their own to take up theirtrade?”

“Of course they have children, everyone does pretty much,don’t they, but they’ve moved away from here. One works upand down the coast roads as a trader, the other married aman from Sychem and lives up there now, has done for severalyears. Neither of them wanted to follow on as seers. Theway they told it to me, it doesn’t run in families. Not like anormal craft. So right now they don’t have anyone with themas apprentice.”

“And with all the business about Iqnu they must be shortof people. This has to be a good time for you, Damari.”

Damariel glanced at him and pursed his lips.“I suppose so.”“Look, Damari, there’s something you can do for me.”Damariel looked quizzically at him. Baruk looked down

and traced some lines in a bare patch of soil with a convenienttwig.

“Well, I was talking with Alloni about working the land.You know, he has all those vines and they really flourish.There’s someone with real talent.”

Damariel nodded, wondering what his brother was leadingtowards.

“Well, you see, he was telling me about a saying they haveabout the year’s working on the land. Of course it starts inautumn, with two months of gathering olives. Then there’stwo months of sowing. A month, no, two months of - oh, Ican’t remember now. But it goes all around the year and endsup with a month of gathering in the summer fruit.”

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Damariel nodded.“It will start at the feast of the new wine.”“That’s it, yes. Well, I was wondering, if I learn it right

from Alloni, would you write it for me on something, then Ican put it up in the olive patch somewhere. It would be like, Idon’t know, like a good luck thing. Like people wear amuletswith prayers in them that a seer has written out for them.”

Damariel nodded again, clearly very moved by the request.“Of course, Baruk, I’ll be very glad to do that for you. Just

tell me the proper order when you’ve learned it from Alloniand I’ll write it. On a piece of pottery, or a wooden board,whatever you want most. Pottery or stone lasts longer butI always think the wooden ones look better as you walk bythem. Just tell me when, and I’ll be very happy to do that foryou. Every time you walk by it you can think of me.”

Summer turned to autumn. Damariel had started seeingSaniyahu and Halith once a week, for a few hours in the af-ternoon or evening, but whenever Baruk asked him about thefuture he said that he felt that he was still on probation withthem. He was still not sure whether they would take him onas a full apprentice. He did not really know what they werewaiting for, or looking for. On good days he felt optimisticabout the matter, but their approach to being a seer was quitedifferent from that of Iqnu, and sometimes he felt like some-one lost in the woods. Baruk had, for his own part, very slowlystarted to try to talk about the olive patch with Shomal. Sofar he did not feel that he had made much progress.

Today the idea had turned against him, and so, later thanhe had planned, Baruk ran up the ridge to Danil’s house.Shomal had kept him working in the olive field rather longerthan he had expected or hoped, and he was late. Then, rightat the end of the day when Baruk had thought all was done,he had started to explain to Baruk how the old plan to grow

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a grape vine against one side of the hut was completely wrong,and how it would be so much better to train it along the bound-ary wall.

Baruk had wanted to listen, and wanted to make sugges-tions, and wanted to get away, all at the same time, and wasnot sure he had handled it well. As it was now, the sun hadnot only touched the trees on the western horizon, but hadalready dipped below their crowns by some margin. He waslate.

He had not wanted to be late, but rather he had wantedto impress Danil and his fellow raiders with his eagernessand diligence. As he approached the door he heard the men’svoices sounding from inside - the mixture of humour, boasting,teasing and mutual appreciation that he longed to participatein. He hesitated at the door, his hand resting lightly on thegrained wood, taking a series of deep breaths to calm himselfdown. Then, calling out to Danil, he pushed the door open andstepped inside without waiting for an answer.

The group of men looked at him as he entered, nodded, thenshifted here and there to make a space for him. He sat down,and Tamguta, to his left, nudged him, passed him a beaker ofthe thin beer they were sharing, and said,

“So why are you so late, Baruk? Been cooking a dove out inthe woods somewhere?”

Baruk smiled vaguely, not sure how to respond, when Danilacross the circle from him caught his eye and winked sugges-tively. Suddenly full of realisation, he grinned more broadlyand looked around at the others.

“Oh yes, that’s right. I was cooking that dove very nicely.Oh yes. But then I had to leave the dove out by the fire so Icould get back here with you all.”

“Now, Baruk, it doesn’t do to leave a dove half-cooked, youknow.”

“Oh, there’s no danger of that.”When there was a general ripple of laughter around the

group, he felt he had pitched the answer right; he was ac-

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Richard Abbott

cepted among them. The conversation turned to some practi-cal details of when and where the next raid would take place,who had what ideas to offer for success. Baruk felt himselfon the verge of contributing several times, but the momentnever quite seemed right. His words were never spoken, hisvoice never quite able to break in.

Much sooner than he had wanted, his time together withthem wore to an end. The men finished, with no obvious sig-nal Baruk could see, stood up, and began getting ready to gooff to their wives’ homes. Baruk stood as well, not sure of theetiquette, and a little unsteady after the several refills of beerhe had accepted. Danil nodded and clasped his shoulder.

“You’re alright, Baruk. Don’t worry. Now go off back toyour mother’s house before she thinks I’ve got you killed orsomething.”

Baruk took a deep breath and opened the door. Turning atthe threshold, he looked back at the others.

“I’m ready to go out with you all. You know that, don’t you?Take me with you next time you go down there. Just you saythe word and I’ll go down into the lowlands with you. I’mready now.”

Danil looked surprised, then put both hands on his hips.“I don’t know, Baruk. What about that brother of yours?”“Let him come too. With me, I mean. I’ll look after him, I’ll

promise you he’ll stay right beside me. Go on, Danil, please.”The older man looked slightly flustered at the repeated

request. He took a breath, and was about to speak whenTamguta intervened.

“Danil, it’s too soon for them. They can wait a while. Betterfor all of us that they wait a bit longer.”

Danil stopped what he was about to say and looked aroundat the others. There were a few cautious glances, a shrug, agenerally hesitant air.

“Not long, Baruk. Wait until next year and that brother ofyours might be ready to come along too. We’d need you to keepan eye on him down there. But we’d need the word from your

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Gaml

family too, what with you not quite being of an age yet. Nowgo home and make sure you get there safely or Yeresheth willlet me know about it.”

Baruk grinned and nodded, before going out beneath thebranches of Rivkah’s honeysuckle tree and turning down pastthe potter’s house towards home. As he got near to the house,he saw Damariel sitting on the wall outside the house, look-ing out across the wooded ridges, outlined vaguely in the lightof the half moon. Kothar was just standing up when Barukfirst saw him, clearly on the point of going, and as Barukapproached he nodded to him and set off towards his fam-ily home. In the moonlight Baruk could see the large-bonedframe he shared with his mother Tamar, but with his straightdark hair and stubby fingers he looked more like Damariel.

Once he had gone, Baruk stopped beside Damariel and puthis hand on his older brother’s shoulder. Damariel nodded ab-sently, still looking away towards the trees, and leaned againsthim before looking suddenly up into his face.

“You smell of beer.”Baruk nodded and replied quite carefully, “Yes, I have been

up at Danil’s house with his raiders.”Damariel nodded. “And did that go well?”“Damari, I’m in with them for sure now. Just a little while

to wait. I’d almost got Danil to agree to take me next time.You know what he’s like, he’d agree to anything if you put itfirmly in front of him.”

Damariel nodded.“Well, the others there, they stopped him this time. But it’ll

be just a few more months to wait now. Then they’ll take me.And someone, mum or dad, has to give their word too. But Ireckon next spring and I’ll be away with them when they go.And Bashur too, they’ll take us both so long as I promise towatch over him. Danil himself said as much. He did.”

“Will you tell him? Bashur, I mean.”At that moment the noise of Shomal and Yeresheth arguing

came from the house, and as Baruk watched Damariel’s face

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Richard Abbott

he realised that he had been sitting on the wall to avoid thesituation inside, and that Kothar had come along after he hadgone outside, not before. Bashur appeared on the roof withSosanneth and the two of them started arranging the bedding.

“Come on, let’s join them up on top. I’ll tell him now, that’llcheer him up.”

They climbed up the outside ladder and for a few minutesthe four were busy laying out the sleeping area. Sosanneth,hearing more angry words rising up from the main part of thehouse, curled up in her sleeping roll and turned away. Fromacross the way, Nerith appeared outside her door for a briefmoment, then seeing the four children up on the roof she wentback in again. The three boys sat together in the moonlightwhile Baruk told Bashur what Danil had said. As he had ex-pected, the news brightened Bashur considerably, and Barukfound himself having to repeat details several times over.

“But look, Bashur, right now you mustn’t talk it over withmum or dad. Let Danil do that when the time’s right. He’llbe much better at it than any of us. If you or I try it now wemight miss the chance for a long time.”

Bashur nodded.“It’s all right, Baruk, I do understand. I want this to come

out right as much as you do.” He paused and thought about it.“Next year, then. We can wait that long. It’s not long, really.”He paused again. “Damari, what about you?”

“Damari’s going to wait here and make up a song for whenwe get back. I’ve already asked him about that.”

Bashur looked at Damariel, then grinned. Damariel nod-ded.

“Well, make sure it’s a good one then. Something that peo-ple will remember.”

The three boys laughed together and settled down in a rownear Sosanneth.

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Dalth (part only)

MATAN YEAR 17

BARUK, BASHUR– brothers in lifeand in death now together –

swifter than eagles,bolder than lions.

Richard Abbott

IT WAS JUST BEFORE NOON, on a bright day at the end ofMatan, when the barley had been gathered and the early

fruit was ripening, that Baruk and Bashur were brought backdead.

. . . the free sample ends here. . . but the story continues. . .

The full novel is available at global Amazon sites.

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Notes

About the authorRichard Abbott has visited some of the places that feature

in this story and others set in broadly the same region. Aswell as writing fictional accounts of the period, he has alsoparticipated in the lively academic debate surrounding it.

Richard now lives in London, England. When not writinghe works on the development and testing of computer andinternet applications. He enjoys spending time with family,walking and wildlife – ideally combining all three of thosepursuits at the same time.

Follow the author on:

• Web site – www.kephrath.com

• Blog – richardabbott.datascenesdev.com/blog/

• Google+ – google.com/+Kephrath

• Facebook – www.facebook.com/pages/In-a-Milk-and-Honeyed-Land/156263524498129

• Twitter – @MilkHoneyedLand

Look out for his other works, which include the following.

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Richard Abbott

Fiction – full-length novels• Scenes from a Life, available from most online retailers,

and general booksellers in

– soft-cover – ISBN 978-0954-5535-9-3– hard-cover – ISBN 978-0954-5535-7-9– ebook format – ISBN 978-0954-5535-8-6

In case of difficulty please check the websitehttp://www.kephrath.com for purchasing options.Feedback for this novel includes:“The author is extremely knowledgeable of his subject andthe minute detail brings the story vividly to life, to thepoint where you can almost feel the sand and the heat. . . ”

Historical Novel Society UK Review

“. . . lovely description – evocative sentences or phrases thatadd so much to the atmosphere of the book”

The Review Group

“The striking thing about ‘Scenes’ is. . . its sensitivity: itsassured, mature observation of people”

Breakfast with Pandora

• The Flame Before Us, available from most online retail-ers, and general booksellers in

– soft-cover – ISBN 978-0993-1684-1-3– ebook format – ISBN 978-0993-1684-0-6

Feedback for this novel includes:“Wide in scope and rich in detail and plot, this is an ac-complished illustration of this era in the region: complex,informative, enjoyable and skilfully put together.”

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Author’s notes

Historical Novel Society UK Review

“. . . A surprising tenderness in the face of brutality, loss,and displacement is the emotion that underpins the ac-tion. . . ”

Breakfast with Pandora

Fiction – short stories• The Man in the Cistern, a short story of Kephrath, pub-

lished in ebook format by Matteh Publications and avail-able at online retailers, ISBN 978-0954-5535-1-7 (kin-dle) or 978-0954-5535-4-8 (epub).

• The Lady of the Lions, a short story of Kephrath, pub-lished in ebook format by Matteh Publications and avail-able at online retailers, ISBN 978-0954-5535-3-1 (kin-dle) or 978-0954-5535-5-5 (epub).

Non-fiction• Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian, published

in ebook format by Matteh Publications and availableat online retailers, ISBN 978-0954-5535-2-4 (kindle) or978-0954-5535-6-2 (epub).

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Richard Abbott

About Matteh PublicationsMatteh Publications is a small publisher based in north

London offering a small range of specialised books, either inebook or softback form. For information concerning current orforthcoming titles please seehttp://mattehpublications.datascenesdev.com/

––80––

Life, love and conflict in the hill country

Damariel is apprenticed as a young manby the village priest, whose recklessactions lead to his disgrace. Damarielmanages to avoid becoming implicatedin the matter and carries on histraining, marrying his childhood friendQetirah shortly before they begin theirshared ministry in the town. Feelingashamed of their continuing inability tohave children, Qetirah becomespregnant by the chief of the four towns,but the pregnancy is difficult.Damariel’s anger and outrage spills overinto the marriage. He holds the chiefresponsible for the situation but cannotsee how to get either justice or revenge.

Cover artwork© Copyright Ian Graingerwww.iangrainger.co.uk